Based on a survey conducted by Transparency International, the police is perceived as the most corrupt public institution in Pakistan. Operating in the absence of any independent oversight, the police acts as a militia for the highest bidder- routinely torturing and arbitrarily detaining civilians to extort confession and  to withdraw complaints.   Almost five years after the ratification of the United Nations Convention Against Torture, Pakistan has failed to enact a law recognizing torture as a criminal offence and providing victims with recourse to an impartial and independent investigation for torture complaints against police. As a result, victims have no option but to approach the police for torture complaints against itself. Needless to say they are met only with apathy and disdain.    A study conducted by the Justice Project Pakistan on 1,184 documented cases of  police torture in the Faisalabad District, discovered that victims who bought complaints against police officers were threatened with violence against themselves and their families with the result that they were often compelled to move cities for protection. None of the victims in the study were provided any form of reparation for their suffering.
Wasay Khan’s story reads like a scripted narrative on the helplessness faced by victims of police brutality torture in Pakistan. On September 2014, he received a frantic phone call from his wife that his step-brother’s son had attempted to sexually assault his four year old daughter. Upon filing of a First Information Report (FIR) against the perpetrator, Wasay’s family became the targets of continual harassment and threats from both the perpetrator’s family and the police to withdraw their complaint. Wasay narrates that one night, he was summoned by the SHO of Thana Cantt, Bahawalpur to report to the station immediately. Upon arriving at the station, Wasay found the perpetrator’s family waiting for him with five police officers. The officers apprehended Wasay and dragged him to a room at the back of the police station.  There, Wasay narrates, he was hung upside down from a bar that passed between his arms and behind the back of his legs. Despite Wasay’s screams, police heinously tortured him in this position by hitting him on the soles of his feet and the back of his legs for 40 minutes, all the while demanding that he withdraw his complaint.
Thereafter the police untied him and forced him to walk briskly around the station yard despite the pain he was experiencing.  One of the officers roughly pushed him to go faster causing him to spiral head first into the bars of the metal gate outlining the yard. Wasay’s head split open and blood gushed out soaking his clothes in blood.  To avoid culpability, the SHO ordered the police to get a statement from Wasay that he had been tortured by the perpetrators. The police then escorted him to the hospital and arranged for a medical examination corroborating the false story.  To prevent Wasay from approaching any party with his complaint they kept him in custody for an additional 3 days without access to his family or legal counseling.
Upon his release, Wasay approached the Regional Police Officer(RPO) to file a complaint. However, when he reached the RPO’s office, the accused SHO and police officers were waiting for him. They trapped him in a small room and threatened to file false terrorism charges against him if he continued with his complaint. The police officers loaded their guns in front of him and said “ Asi chittay nu Kala aur Kalay nu chitta bana saktay nay” ( We can make an innocent person a criminal and a criminal an innocent man”) .
Wasay Khan has knocked on every door available to him to get justice for his daughter and the torture inflicted upon him and his family by the police.  Everywhere he goes, he is turned away. The state continues to harbor and protect perpetrators of torture and brutality in its midst- there have been virtually no prosecutions for police torture in recent years. A Bill to criminalise torture and provide institutional mechanisms for investigation and reparation for victims has been pending in the National Assembly for over a year now. There is, however,   no political will to check the prevalence of police torture in a system that allows politicians to use police as their personal militias. When Wasay approached the MPA of his district he too was turned away and asked to resolve his own “ghar ka mamla” (domestic matter).
Wasay, like many others, has been failed by the state. He is helpless and without any recourse to justice. Until there is a conscious effort by the state to radically reform Pakistan outdated police structure and remove impunity for perpetrators of torture, his cries and those of many other will continue to ring unheard and unaddressed at police stations and court rooms all over the country.

 The writer is a lawyer currently working with the Justice Project Pakistan.