LAHORE: The non-police members of a committee assessing the Police Order 2002 have reportedly declared that the criminal justice system is the “collective” responsibility of different state agencies and not police alone, and the very concept of safety commissions or public liaison committees is wrong, putting the autonomy driven IGP and his team on the defensive.
Police have been defending their autonomy given to them under the Police Order 2002 by the Gen Musharraf regime, also abolishing the district magistracy considered to be a check on police.
The committee is headed by Law Minister Rana Sanaullah Khan and three sub-committees are separately assessing the Police Order 2002.
Police have been insisting that there is nothing wrong with the safety commissions and liaison committees and their only fault has been that they could not constitute the bodies designed to watch the footsteps of police.
Bureaucracy has, nevertheless, disapproved the bodies saying they failed whenever formed, and are offices of police touts, having no authority, independence or paraphernalia to even ask for a minor correction.
Sources said on Sunday, the IGP again defended the bodies during the meetings of committees but the members from bureaucracy maintained that the very concept of these so-called external watch towers was wrong.
These were designed on the pattern of England’s Local Police Authority. But the prototype itself had been abolished in England around seven years ago because it failed to deliver.
The safety commissions and liaison committees were forums for serving “mutual interests” and should not be taken as offices of accountability or even correction.
Sources said the data taken from the police department was also discussed during one meeting of the committee to prove where police faulted and why it was necessary to design a real external oversight to correct when they are wrong.
They said at present the provincial government team working on the police law was finding out a more viable alternate to the safety commissions and liaison committees.
But in the meantime, introduction of inspectorates of all agencies relating to criminal justice system like police, prosecution, home department, prisons, probation and parole was also being considered.
They were delivering in England as genuine external oversight. “They are independent, have the required expertise and paraphernalia. Senior officials of the departments concerned having a command over their respective subjects run the commissionerates independent of their actual bosses,” a senior official said, adding “no-one can browbeat them.”
He said the legal experts of the committee, including Khawaja Haris and Mustafa Ramdey, had proposed that the police system in the neighbouring India should also be assessed.
India had established police commissionerate in some cities but had been following the Police Act 1861 which Gen Musharraf had abolished. “This means they want assessment of the police act which police say is the law of the past.”
The lawyers had also recommended assessment of the suggestions made on the directions of the Supreme Court to improve the criminal justice system in Pakistan.
(Daily Dawn)
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