Custodial killings

EDITORIAL: There is only one way to settle the matter of alleged custodial killing of Balaach Mola Bakhsh in Turbat.

CTD officials claim he was gunned down in an intelligence-based operation in the city, based on the information about a terrorist hideout that he himself provided in police custody a few days earlier.

His family, on the other hand, says he was never released and his body, along with three other unidentified corpses, was dumped on a roadside while he was still, for all intents and purposes, in custody.

There is visible outrage in the area, with civil society, human rights groups and lawyers joining Bakhsh’s family and friends in protesting and demanding a thorough, transparent investigation. Such conflicting claims are not new.

For, often in such matters relatives of killed people say one thing and the police says another, and that is usually the end of the matter. Yet where there is smoke there is fire, and such trends have gone on far too long with minimum check.

Indeed, the outside world, including our crucial trade partners, has also started noting these things. Just last week, the EU presented a list of concerns about Pakistan, which might at some point even derail the GSP+ arrangement, and human rights violations and illegal detentions were on it as well.

While the truth about this particular case has yet to come out, there’s no doubt that extrajudicial executions are an undeniable stain on the country’s security agencies. And it’s not just that the state has allowed it to happen that is very concerning.

Nor that it does not move with urgency to address such concerns whenever they arise. But rather that even when society as a whole is appalled enough to take to the streets, block roads and demand justice, there is still barely a murmur at the top.

Even now, as HRCP (Human Rights Commission of Pakistan) and premier lawyer bodies join local families in their demand for justice and transparency in this and numerous similar cases, it doesn’t seem as if anybody in government is too bothered.

This, once again, highlights why people have largely lost, and continue to lose, faith in the government whose number-one duty is to ensure all constitutionally mandated freedoms for the citizens of the country.

It also explains, to an extent, why parts of Balochistan remain restive. It seems there might be some truth after all in the argument that the security apparatus is too busy covering its own extrajudicial excesses to give the province’s real problems, especially terrorism that is so hard to contain, the time, attention and resources they require. And, once again, the only way to settle this argument is to probe it thoroughly. But that will require political will in government, which is still nowhere in sight.

This, too, is one of those problems for which all administrations in the centre and Balochistan, regardless of their political and/or security leanings, are equally to blame. It’s as if Balochistan remains unsafe and underdeveloped by design.

Let there be no doubt about it, if this thinking does not change, the dream of turning Gwadar into a regional business hub will go sour very quickly.

The Bakhsh case can, then, prove to be a litmus test for the government when it comes to custodial killings. Simply put, if people’s genuine grievances are not addressed in keeping with the law of the land, then the state will have only itself to blame for its own growing loss of legitimacy.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2023