“For the determination of his civil rights and obligations or in any criminal charge against him a person shall be entitled to a fair trial and due process”, states Article 10A of the Constitution. Perhaps the Crime Control Department (CCD) of Punjab Police, brought into existence vide the Police Order (Amendment) Ordinance, 2025, would beg to differ from such an entitlement, as recent developments have so clearly shown.
Over the past four months, no other security force in Punjab has found itself engaged in more gunfights with hardened criminals than the CCD. Thankfully, almost every single time, the Department prevails — often with rather poetic consequences for the alleged offenders. A child abuser from Kasur ended up shooting himself in the groin after encountering the CCD; another harasser who was filmed making obscene gestures at women in public just so happened to break in half the same finger he had used to make the unsavory gestures. The government has thrown its full weight behind the CCD and given it but one mandate: do away with the legal formalities and exterminate hardened criminals. And exterminated hardened criminals the CCD has.
One cannot help but feel guilty questioning the modus operandi of the CCD. After all, it has done nothing but quite literally put down hardened criminals. In the face of such a stellar track record, who could argue that career murderers, rapists, dacoits and gangsters should not have been shot dead by the CCD (or rather their own accomplices, as the official record almost always ends up stating)? The answer: anyone versed in Pakistan’s ill-fated trysts with new, over-empowered departments presented as quick fixes to ancient, institutional problems.
Take the now pitiable National Accountability Bureau: beautifully gift-wrapped and presented to the masses as the panacea to Pakistan’s corruption woes, we were promised that nothing could stop the NAB from rooting out corruption. Power upon power was conferred upon it. No law, no norm of democracy could stand in the way of its quest for justice. And for a very short while, the Bureau did live up to the hype.
But then came the political weaponization and the inevitable crash, burn and fireball the NAB was always doomed to erupt in. It exists in a sorry state now; its wings clipped beyond repair, being made to suffer for the fantasies of those who commanded it.
Travel a little further back and see how Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s Federal Security Force (FSF) was not much different. In fact, the recipe was almost exactly the same: create a parallel force so as to allow the bypassing of necessary bureaucratic, judicial and/or constitutional hurdles in order to achieve a quick fix to any given problem. In the span of just five years, we saw that the FSF devolved into a personal hit squad and ultimately met its end at the hands of Bhutto’s successor.
The fact of the matter is that Pakistan’s history is replete with numerous examples such as those of the NAB and FSF supra. The CCD is nothing new, just the latest shiny toy delivered by a servient bureaucracy into the hands of a Chief Minister who has yet to learn the Shakespearean lesson her father and uncle were forced to learn, that these violent delights have violent ends.
Today, it feels great to read about the CCD delivering lightning justice to the vermin of Pakistani society. No more wrangling with a moth eaten, compromised judiciary; no more having to watch the bad guys walk free. Simple, instant, unavoidable justice — as it always should have been. But what happens when the constabulary, so accustomed to having its way – no questions asked – starts pointing the gun in directions it is not supposed to? What happens on the day the CCD accidentally encounters upon an innocent? Or when inevitably, like almost every government department, they become a tool for political persecution?
A particularly recurring theme in a history of recurring themes is one which sees us as a nation rushing to slap band-aids over deep, structural flaws. It always looks great in the moment but over time, the wound continues to fester and eventually get infected. In creating the CCD and giving it a de facto license to kill, what is not being recognized is that the problem was never the fact that Punjab is overrun by hardcore criminals. For a long time, the problem has been a Constitution that is defied, a legal system which is flawed to its core, and a judiciary which has been handicapped — but all of these remain conveniently ignored because it is easier to slap on the proverbial band-aid than to undertake serious, long-term reforms.
That we have reached a point where we celebrate transgressions of Article 10A by the CCD should be a cause for concern — perhaps most of all for the judiciary. Yet, the very same judiciary which was to stand as the guardian of the Constitution lets off those who defy it with a slap on the wrist, as we saw the Lahore High Court do when petitioned by a mother who had lost her son to an alleged ‘encounter’ by the CCD.
No matter how ‘right’ it feels, the cycle of quick fixes to foundational problems must be brought to an end immediately, and even more urgently so when the particular quick fix involves shooting Pakistani citizens dead in the middle of the night. Today, we celebrate these extra-judicial murders because ostensibly, the slain are criminals. But what of the day it is an innocent who is at the receiving end of the bullet? Or when the Department is transformed into a tool for exacting political vendetta? This administering of justice non licet, or forbidden justice, must end. Bell the cat now or suffer the consequences later.
