Jungle justice edit in The Business Recorder, May 12

They must be unprofessional or badly trained and poorly armed new entrants; otherwise the dacoits in Punjab form a formidable force. They carry sophisticated weapons, and should they run into the police, in the ensuing encounter, they don’t do badly.

That eight of them were bludgeoned to death, with stones and sticks, by the villagers somewhere in the district of Toba Tek Singh, on Sunday night, is unthinkable unless one believes they must have been extraordinarily down on their luck, or they were not dacoits at all. Comprehensively covered by the media, their story is both a narrative of the deteriorating law and order in the country and an affirmation of the fact that the public would prefer to deliver its own jungle-justice than to approach the police.

According to a news report, fearful of dacoits – two of the dacoits had reportedly surveyed the area of their operation a day before as cloth vendors – the villagers were keeping a night vigil. So, as soon as dacoits were through with their operation, loot and plunder and a gun wound to a resisting person, the villagers surrounded them and then killed them. Police arrived late, as happens routinely.

Of course, there is some politics to this ugly incident also; while the PML (N) MPA from the area insists that the victims were through and through professional dacoits, his PML (Q) rival maintains they were not dacoits but wayfarers through that village, who were ambushed and killed in cold blood by the villagers with the help of police.

But what is certain is that instead of handing over the alleged dacoits to the police, the villagers delivered their own mob justice. And, they are not the first to do this. Over the last several years, every now and then, incidents of people taking the law into their hands and lynching alleged thieves and robbers in full public view are quite common.

In fact, some of the most spectacular incidents of mob justice, delivered on the spot by putting the accused on fire or clubbing him to death, have taken place in Karachi, the country’s most cosmopolitan city. Then, there are also cases of blasphemy, often fake and concocted, which stir up a violent reaction, leading to arson and carnage.

No amount of argument or justification can condone the crime of delivering street justice. However, what drives the people to vent their rage in this manner is a question that needs deeper examination. Invariably, behind every such act lurks the ever-widening trust-deficit between the public and the police.

A case in point is last week’s people assault on a police post in Korangi whose officers had let go a woman – her two alleged accomplices had fled before the people caught her – incurring public outrage. The public is growing angry with the ineffective and corrupt police force. Add to this the fact that hardly 10 percent of the accused earn punishment in a court of law – speaks of the poor investigation and prosecution by the concerned police officials.

Even otherwise, as the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan has noted, vigilante justice, delivered by the villagers of Toba Tek Singh, is reflective of the deeper brutalization of our society. So much evil and wrongdoing is condoned and tolerated on a day to day basis that we tend to grow increasingly insensitive to the sufferings of others. But that should end.

In this case, the Punjab government must initiate a proper inquiry and punish the guilty. Those who took part in the drama of delivering justice in the village of Toba Tek Singh must be brought before the court and if found guilty, should be punished. Allowed to go unchecked, an incident of mob justice can turn out to be prologue to a Revolution, which, good or bad, is invariably bloody.http://www.brecorder.com/index.php?id=1055460&currPageNo=1&query=&search=&term=&supDate=