EDITORIAL: It seems as if the writ of government of Pakistan is not all-inclusive. There are pockets of national landscape which are in the control of tribal chiefs, warlords and even dacoits who rule it the way they want.
One such pocket is the riverine area of Ghotki district in upper Sindh where the dacoits won a bloody battle with the police Sunday morning. As the district police set up a camp to launch operation to recover three boys abducted a week before it came under the dacoits’ attack. And as if it was the one-sided warfare as five policemen, including a DSP and two SHOs, lost their lives.
Another 25 of the police personnel were taken hostage and released by dacoits. A local landlord also played his role in the return of the dead bodies of the martyred. As against the ill-prepared and ill-equipped police force the 150-strong dacoit gang used most sophisticated weapons, including anti-aircraft guns, rocket-launchers and machineguns.
The dacoits also uploaded the video of the destroyed police picket and bodies of policemen on social media. They had clearly won the battle, leaving the police officials with head-scratching what to do now and how to explain its classic failure to recover the abducted boys.
It is important to note that in November last year one such encounter in the Indus riverbed in Shikarpur took place, but it seems not much was done as an effective and result-oriented follow-up. Presently, only workable solution lies in what the concerned authorities did in 2016 to clear the Chotu gang-ruled river island in Rajanpur district (southern Punjab).
As we talk about the unrelenting ruthlessness of the riverbed-based gangs of dacoits we also need to look into this problem in its socio-economic and governance totality. This is not a minor law and order challenge; it is a huge challenge as several gangs of dacoits operate from riverine areas spread over around 15,000 acres of land in Sindh alone.
In Punjab, too, there are several dacoit hideouts, though not of the scale as these are in Sindh. Last year as dacoits kidnapped a person in Rahimyar Khan’s katcha area they agreed to surrender him if the government promised jobs and such other rights. Did the government live up to its promise that it made to those outlaws? An answer to this question, however, still remains elusive.
Be that as it may, while the Ghotki police chief had sought help of armed forces to launch an operation against the dacoits equipped with lethal and modern weapons Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah directed IGP Sindh to submit a proposal on the setting up of a ‘Riverine Anti-Dacoit Force’.
One wishes all success to what the chief minister has proposed, but that would only stop bleeding and heal the wound. There has got to be a more comprehensive planning to work on three fronts: One, practical measures should be taken to mainstream the people as only a few of them are dacoits while the rest, who are in thousands, are simple people who sit on riverbeds just to make their living.
Two, the police must choke the channels through which sophisticated weaponry reaches the dacoits in the riverine areas. Why do we need to involve armed forces when better equipped and more motivated policemen can fight and defeat the dacoit mafia? Three, the police action against dacoits in riverine areas should not be event-oriented and kind of gut reaction; it should be policy-oriented and given serious consideration so it is doable.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022