The Devil Within

OCTOBER 2001 - What is more sordid? The grisly murders Javed and Sajid carried out or their murder at the hands of the infamous Lahore Kot Lakhpat jail staff? That they deserved to go the gallows is one thing but it seems obvious the jail boys were in a bit of a hurry and decided to do the good deed themselves. Of course any fool will tell you that they were living on borrowed time and the good old law enforcing authorities – and enforcing is a key word, were going to get them by crook or by hook – in this case, the hook made up of bed sheets which were used to strangle the pair.

Once upon a time long ago, a college friend now long gone, used to narrate how his father who was in the police, would get the thana record cleaned up every time they laid their hands on a proclaimed offender. It was a happy day at the thana when a PO was nabbed because the plan would be laid out to kill him and make it look like an accident, then proclaim innocence or self defence and pin all the unsolved crimes on the deceased. Dead men tell no tales was as good a guiding principle as any and across this blighted land where human life has always been a cheap commodity, this principle has found in the police, happy converts and practitioners. The number of people who have lost their limbs and lives at the hands of the guardians of law and order must run into the thousands and before long, into the millions, because there are so many law breakers about and so many killers in uniform that the two are going to continue creating a vile and sickening bonding. In effect, the killings will go on. Some of the lucky ones might generate a judicial enquiry but there have been so many hundreds and thousands of judicial enquiries that the people have amnesia every time they hear the wretched word. I cannot recall one judicial enquiry that bore any tangible results. There must have been some because even here where things are hopeless most of the time, now and then a beam of justice does shine through, engulfed seconds later in murky gloom. However, what has always intrigued the public which has a second skin where its police force is concerned, is the utter lack of a credible plan each time the police are carrying out another gruesome murder. Surely, in the rank and file of the killer squads that pass off as defenders of the rights of common folk, there must be one or two people who have more brains than a broken pot. It seems that this is a misplaced hope because year after year, as the police kills its own people, proclaimed and not so proclaimed offenders, it seems utterly incapable of fashioning a half way decent plot to cover up their terrible crime. I suppose they are so power drunk, they feel no need for a good story line. Much better to do a hatchet job and then lie brazenly when the press asks questions. The police bosses are understanding guys. They don’t ask awkward questions and buy the thinnest stories from the fattest cops.

Examine the twin ‘suicide’ of Javed and Sajid earlier this week. According to the police, both of them lodged in separate cells, killed themselves at the same time on the same night using the same method – bed sheets tied to a beam only seven and a half feet high. How a man of medium build, no Alam Channa the pair, can convert painstakingly his bed sheet into a kind of rope, loop it over the horizontal bar near the roof and then bring the end down, tie it around his neck, secure it good and tight, then pull it up long enough to elevate the body and then tighten the works and drop so that the hanging can take place. Even Houdini would have had to spend a few months working this one out, but Javed and Sajid did it like ducks take to ponds and that too in utter silence. Why disturb the other inmates since both the convicted murderers were basically considerate guys. The guard on duty, who had fallen asleep or gone to ‘answer the nature of call’ as one newspaper put it so well or simply panicked or saw nothing, did what any sensible policeman would do under similar circumstances. He lowered the two bodies, we assume separately, since there is no mention of this task having been achieved together – anything is possible where the police is concerned, then placed them ever so gently (we must respect the dead particularly those dead recently) and went to sleep or snore or answer another nature of call or meditate on the meaning of life. Constable Istikhar who must receive some commendation for a highly trained presence of mind, between answering nature of calls and ferrying bodies to and fro, did remember to go off duty at 2pm and remembered to give an ‘all ok’ sign to Constable Liaquat, who merrily took up his duty and if he saw two bodies lying with large strangulation or as the police put it, suicide marks on the necks of two of the most well-publicised killers, thought nothing of it. Obviously a man who is slow on the uptake and not blessed with the most sensitive of noses, spent another three hours and when the clock struck five – one wonders if this sound is produced by making a prisoner scream five times by inserting a red hot poker in his behind, he ‘smelt foul play.’ The rest is tainted history.

Rather pointless to add that Constable Istikhar who apparently having answered all the nature of calls he could, has been suspended (we are not told from what) along with seven other jail officials for negligence that allowed the two crafty murderers to carry out their clever plan of dual suicide. From all official accounts, it is a suicide, though it is pertinent to point out that both the men were able to inflict wounds on their persons using blunt instruments (like pillows) before proceeding ahead with their smart plan. An FIR has been registered by the police – a clear case of the kettle calling the pot black followed with a four letter word which cannot be printed here because this is a family newspaper, and if the Governor has not been shocked or grieved or both yet, he soon will be. Some other big wigs will announce an enquiry into the matter – does anyone remember the train enquiry into the derailing of what was it when the guilty parties were to be brought to justice – and soon enough, there will be another grisly drama somewhere and the shock proof public will read more pulp fiction with glazed eyes and somnolent minds. In all this, four are shot dead in Quetta and another case of police ineptitude is splashed across the national media. The 15 troublemakers are clearly identified but the police make no effort to arrest them or register any case and invoke the wrath of the President – no less who takes severe notice of this dereliction of duty. So more suspensions, transfers and the like, but we all know that the police of Pakistan is more criminally minded than the most die hard criminals about. True they deal with low life and the things they see can turn anyone’s stomach but there can be no mistaking the fact that they are the scumbags of our society and no amount of reforms will ever cleanse their black souls.