Pakistan: Find the real ‘Gullu’ Butt

A palpable sense of justice, yes, but does the conviction of Shahid Aziz (better known as Gullu Butt) imply that justice has been fully served to the victims of the Model Town incident? Certainly not. Gullu Butt, the lout who was caught on camera by the media vandalising cars and public property during the Model Town tragedy, has finally been convicted on Thursday by an Anti-Terrorism Court. He has been sentenced to prison for 11 years and also a fine of Rs 111,000. What caught the public’s attention on the very first day of the incident was that Butt, while on his smashing spree on June 17, was continuously being patted and hugged by the police personnel around him. Such gestures of camaraderie obviously provoked many questions. Was the police patronising him and letting him act as a police proxy or was there some other force that held the strings while they tried to remove the barriers positioned outside the Minhajul Quran Secretariat? Adding to the mystery, the bailing out of a downright hooligan by the Lahore High Court on the grounds of lack of evidence seemed inexplicable when the video and eyewitness evidence in this case was certainly more than sufficient.

Butt’s history too confirms the reservations people had about him that he was complicit with and backed by certain authorities while he went on with his bashing activities. Reports suggest that Gullu Butt was a police tout and a petty don who also ran some social welfare campaigns and besides being a police informer, he was an active PML-N member and used to solve people’s problems using his party influence. All of this, if put together, gives a tripartite picture in which Gullu Butt appears to be in cahoots with the PML-N and Punjab police in mishandling the crowd in Model Town that ended up claiming 14 lives of Pakistan Awami Tehreek workers. No doubt the sacking of the then Law Minister Rana Sanaullah served as a scapegoat. But that has failed to quell speculations about whether the trail pointed higher up. One would expect that the investigation should at least make it clear who ordered the police to resort to violence. Similarly, why has not a single police official been either convicted or sacked so far? Many other similar questions are still left answered. Nonetheless, one can only hope that the court carries on with its independent judicial inquiry in order to fulfil the demands of justice as soon as possible and bring the actual architect of this bloodshed to light.