THE thana is an exceedingly grim place in Pakistan. Rather than being an integral part of the community, the local police station is a place to be feared. The main reason for this is the police’s extensive use of physical violence including torture while dealing with suspects. As reported in this paper on Monday, a video of policemen assaulting two individuals in Lahore’s Thokar Niaz Baig area that made it to the TV channels has once again exposed the brutish methods employed by our law enforcers. As per the report, the police had signalled the two men — on a motorbike — to stop, and when they refused to comply, the officers gave chase and thereafter gave the two suspects a hiding. Indeed, in these days of rampant militancy and violent crime, law enforcers are under tremendous pressure and at times have to apply force against dangerous suspects. But these are exceptional circumstances, whereas physical violence has been an insidious part of Pakistan’s thana culture as far back as memory serves. In fact, as a Human Rights Watch report released last year notes, police brutality is a countrywide problem. And as some law-enforcement experts have pointed out, the culture of police brutality happens to be common across South Asia.

Perhaps the main reason our law enforcers employ such dreadful tactics is that our policing model — for the most part — is a remnant of the colonial age, ill-suited to protect and serve the populace of a modern state. As experts have repeatedly said, until the policing model changes, it will be nearly impossible to wipe out the use of torture by police personnel. Instead of a policing model that dates back to the days of the Raj, community policing is the need of the day, through which police officers can take citizens into confidence and use modern scientific methods to pursue cases. Employing violence has failed to make Pakistan safer, and has only widened the chasm of mistrust between the people and the police.

Published in Dawn January 24th, 2017