Former Justice Kazim Malik's report on the death of two brothers at the hands of a mob in Sialkot city last month, largely vindicates the public perception that the local administration, particularly the police, had connived in stage-managing the gruesome lynching drama.
The police officials were not helpless spectators as some had initially believed, but facilitators of this heinous crime to see to it that it ended the way they wanted - that the so-called young robbers were meted out 'street justice'.
The fateful event on August 15 was in line with the practice of killing the accused in so-called police encounters, the brutal art honed by a clutch of police officers in central Punjab. Here, too, not only they supervised the lynching game, but also helped manufacture the First Information Report (FIR) against the slain brothers, replete with all the dirty tricks of the trade.
But Justice Kazim Malik saw through this and declared, without mincing words, the police officials and some others in the local administration as first-degree accuseds in the murder of the young boys. That the local medical officer had the audacity to say that the bodies carried fewer wounds than what the television footage suggested - one is struck by the level of distortion, the bureaucracy can inject to pollute the truth.
But even more frustrating is the fact that for a good four days, the people of Sialkot - the city that takes pride in being the birthplace of Allama Iqbal and Faiz Ahmed Faiz - kept quiet over this grim tragedy. Scores of them saw the murderous drama being played out right in front of them, some of them even became a party to the crime. But for the TV footage, the outside world would have never known that the Romans, who enjoyed watching death play from the ringside of the Coliseum, still exist.
How come the people of Sialkot, and for that matter from many other places in Pakistan, seem to be getting reconciled to barbaric police encounters? As if the police acts like a contract killer. Not only the investigation into the killing of the two young brothers should be put on the fast-track, and delivered exemplary punishment, but the police and other officials who connive in such crimes should also be exposed and brought to justice.
If, for this to happen, the existing law is inadequate, it should be beefed up by prompt legislation. It is government's fundamental responsibility to protect the life and limbs of the people and to provide them justice. By allowing the law of the jungle to prevail, the government forfeits its right to rule.
Justice Kazim Malik has stoutly rejected the reports that the murdered brothers carried pistols, juxtaposing two quite contradictory versions - one saying "some unknown persons" handed over two pistols to the Rescue 1122 and the other claiming that the pistols were snatched from the deceased. He finds the boys absolutely innocent, saying in so many words that they were neither dacoits nor hardened criminals. But the Sialkot saga does not end here. Some questions remain unanswered.
For instance, why the two brothers were there, near the place they were picked up by Rescue 1122, so early in the morning? Then, if they are innocent, who killed Bilal, the milkman whose father filed the FIR against the two brothers? Without finding out who killed him 'the whole truth' about this sordid incident would not be known. May be going into this aspect of the incident was not included in the terms of reference of the task assigned to Justice Kazim Malik. He also leaves the door open for further investigation by conceding that "analysing and scrutinising the evidence on both sides with the yardstick of trial court".