An HRCP-AGHS fact-finding mission says it has received credible testimonies indicating large-scale sexual abuse of children over many years in Husain Khanwala village of Kasur district. It is clear that a heinous crime has been committed against children. The references made to a land dispute in the village are irrelevant and nothing can justify avoidance of impartial investigation and prosecution, says the report released here on Wednesday. The fact-finding team agrees that the crime remained concealed largely because the victims’ families paid extortion money and they were also intimidated. The police ignorance about the video clippings freely circulating in the area and their failure to take action lends support to charges of policemen’s collusion with the culprits, it says. The children abuse scandal surfaced after a clash between the police and protesting families in Kasur earlier this month which left two dozen protestors and 28 police injured. This scandal has the potential to trigger a serious path-breaking reform of Punjab’s police. As the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan’s fact-finding report shows, there was criminal neglect and collusion with the perpetrators on the part of the police, and no serious investigation was conducted prior to the scandal breaking in the media, despite the abuse dating back to at least 2010. The aforementioned report exposes the decayed entrails of the Punjab police and their practices. Any credible inquiry should also be putting the policing failures on trial, and that can only be achieved by a panel of impartial investigators with no ties to the local police, in front of whom the victims can feel comfortable in presenting their version of events without fear of reprisal or scornful dismissal. It is to be noted that this display of gross incompetence is only the latest policing scandal to hit the airwaves. Thus for the credibility and longevity of its own regime, it is imperative for the Punjab government to make energetic efforts to reorganise and free the police of interference by political players and instil a culture of “protect and serve”. Any police organisation that treats child abuse as a banal reality, or suggests without shame that “actually only 30” children were made victims, is a police that needs its culture and training radically transformed.
pk.shafaqna.com
