Another video has leaked showing armed police including ATS standing guard as vigilantes search cars for the body of murdered student Mashal Khan.
Count the number of armed police officers including ATS who stood quietly as killers of #Mashal searched cars to ensure no one escapes pic.twitter.com/Za4dQSy84J
— M. Jibran Nasir (@MJibranNasir) April 19, 2017
Sadly, this is not a surprise. Even after police cleared the victim from any allegations, still there are countless who support his killers including many officers from law enforcement agencies. This is not an accusation, it is a fact stated by police themselves.
We are all familiar with reports that University administrators pressurized students to accuse Mashal. And we have seen the report of PTI councillor Arif Mardan warning students not to name the killers. We know the dramatic statements of PM Nawaz Sharif and IHC Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui against blasphemy. All of these add up to state’s role in whipping up the religious sentiments and making a very dangerous environment. However there is another way that the state is responsible for these lynch mobs.
Whole society may be sensitive to blasphemy issue, but this is not enough to explain vigilantism and lynch mobs. If students and administrators truly believed that someone has committed blasphemy, why won’t they report to authorities? Why won’t we accept the legal process to determine guilt and innocence? I believe the reason is that we have not actual legal system in this country, and I will now provide evidence.
When Rangers pick up people and torture them to death, when state agencies kidnap bloggers, when supporters of killers openly defy government orders with no consequences, when militant leaders declare that they are unmoved by government bans, when Army denies foreigners consular access before sentencing them to death in secret trials, when hardened terrorists are killed in ‘police encounters‘ and even those who are captured are tried and convicted in secret military courts, the message is given very clearly that there is no actual law and order but only the law of the jungle. If even our own law enforcement agencies act as vigilantes, how can we expect anyone else to act differently?
Parliamentarians condemn lynching and declare that law of the jungle cannot prevail, but they are empty words for show only. Which lawmaker will reign in out of control agencies? Which lawmaker will change laws that affect religious sensitivities?
Speaking about why police did not stop the mob that killed Mashal Khan, a police officer said “There are hundreds of sympathisers in my force and if I take too much interest in the case I might be killed too.”
Police know that the reality is that the law of the state is the law of the jungle.
And privately, in our own hearts, we know it too.
