Pakistan: The Lahore killings

In Pre-partition India, police forces of two Indian states - Punjab and Bihar - were notoriously known for their brutality. The post-Partition two Punjabs and Bihar still live up to their reputation with shameful aplomb. What happened in the Model Town neighbourhood of Lahore on Tuesday, the capital of Pakistani Punjab, only contributes to the argument that our police are a living legacy of colonialism in society.

The encounter between the police and Qadri's activists took place in and around his party-cum-teaching centre in the city's leafy neighbourhood of Model Town resulting in heavy casualties: 11 people, including two women, were killed and a very large number of them received injuries - 61 of them suffered gunshot wounds - during a daylong clash between the police and Qadri's men and women; the injured also included 25 policemen. At the end of the day both sides could claim a kind of victory - police insisting it succeeded in removing barriers from the site and Qadri men lionizing their sacrifices for the cause of the 'revolution'. Dismayed people watched the grisly violence in Lahore as it played out in gory details, obscuring the North Waziristan military operation, which is so much critical to the very survival of Pakistan. Some say all of it was a setup by the government to puncture the 'revolution' while others insist Qadri is dancing to the tunes set by the GHQ. The question whether it was a well-honed conspiracy to damn the Sharif government or a bid to 'nip the evil in bud' may find an answer in a protracted and contentious debate in which for the present we have no interest. What interests us, and worries us, is the manner the Punjab police went about to remove barricades and barriers built around the Qadri complex and the kind of apparently-organised resistance put up by the defenders of the complex. And as it happened everything that could go wrong went wrong. Some of the visuals of the Model Town battlefield imprinted on mind are too horrific; one simply cannot bear an old white-bearded protestor being struck at his frail ankles, or a notorious wanted-by-police gangster leading the law-enforcers' charge on the protestors, or mysterious absence from the site of any top-notch political bigwig for the whole day. Indeed it was an apocalypse.

There are questions that must be answered. These barriers were there on the site for more than three years; in fact ever since Tahirul Qadri issued a 'fatwa' against the Taliban in 2011. His risk of being a victim of reprisal had the official recognition and the barriers as security measure were allowed to remain in place by the administration, quite often earning it the outrage of the neighbours. And this was not specific to Qadri complex, as we have such security barricades and barriers all over the country. The question is why now the local administration felt necessary to arrive at the place, at the dead of night with heavy earthmoving bulldozers under the protection of an unusually large contingent of police. And if there was resistance, as it was, why then options other than brute force were not employed, defying the standard practice in dealing with resistance to removal of encroachments. And one very pertinent question: who brought in this Gullu Butt who kept vandalising the vehicles at the place with vengeance as the police officials watched him with unabashed glee. Is he the kind of cat's paw the Lahore police are often accused of employing? There are equally pertinent questions the Qadri side has to answer. For one, there is the puzzling riddle as to why Dr Qadri decided to come to Pakistan with a bang and launch a 'revolution', the rationale for which is neither here nor there, at the very time when the people of Pakistan must showcase total unity and stand behind its forces that are fighting the nation's most critical war. He claims to be rejecting the Taliban's version of religion and politics yet his moves tend to undermine the oneness and togetherness expected of all segments of Pakistani society including political parties. Then there is the question: if and why the Qadri activists were in a state of battle-readiness when the issue was only removal of barriers and barricades. Were they equipped with lethal arms as contended by the police? Let 'revolution' wait; first preference should be the national security in these trying times. In the meanwhile, both the government ministers, particularly federal railways minister Saad Rafiq and law minister Rana Sanaullah (the latter is widely considered as a deputy of a visibly shaken Punjab chief minister Shahbaz Sharif) and the Qadri followers must show restraint; and they should help the judicial commission to investigate and give its verdict as to what had gone wrong on that fateful day and who should be held responsible for it, although Qadri has rejected this one-man judicial commission, arguing that those who carried out 'mass murders' have lodged themselves an FIR against his party activists, including his son, under terrorism charges.