Coming so soon in the aftermath of the broad daylight terrorist attack on a Rangers' post in Karachi, the ghastly tragedy of Sunday morning in which five policemen inside Gulistan-e-Jauhar police station fell easy victims to a seemingly ingeniously planned attach will leave many people doubly shocked.
From all available accounts, one would get the torturous feeling that the police department was caught completely unawares.
First, it is the evident apathy to the urgency of providing adequate protection to as many as 37 improvised police stations, including the Gulistan-e-Jauhar outfit, functioning in the city, obviously, for enforcement of law and order in the trying times the country happens to be passing through.
For one thing, they did not care to put up a fence around the place. Secondly, the failure of the administration to learn any lessons from the ghastly attacks on the Police and Rangers during the last 18 months or so can be described as nothing short of a suicidal neglect.
Needless to point out, the very perception of laxity on these counts can only lead to erosion of confidence in the capability of the government to deal effectively with the wave of lawlessness now threatening the lives and properties of the ordinary citizens.
The Gulistan-e-Jauhar tragedy betrays a glaring lack of preparedness to meet such an eventuality.
For the ease with which unidentified armed persons are reported to have stormed the place and got away with it, is simply horrific. It is not even known if the policemen in the required numbers were actually present on the occasion.
The only consolation is the acknowledged gallantry of a policeman, who had been offering Fajr prayers in one of the rooms, though injured while confronting the assailants, fired upon them, injuring at least one of them, who too they managed to take away with them.
Whatever may be the outcome of the investigations about the identity and motives of the terrorists, the first and foremost job for the police now is to devise a fool-proof mechanism for self-protection, not only to repair their own morale but also to avert complete loss of public faith in their efficacy as an instrument of governance.