Crimes committed by women has been on the rise in Pakistan since the enactment of a controversial women protection bill that gives protection to women against arrest, giving ammunition to militant groups to use females in their activities. The report found that the protection provided by the bill has helped militant groups to recruit women.
“It has been witnessed that more and more women are being hired by the criminal and terrorist networks during last four years to carry out their subversive activities,” it says, citing 35 cases, in which women have been nabbed for trying to smuggle explosive material. Intelligence reports suggest that the organized criminal wings and militant groups are hiring poor women on the pretext that even if they are arrested, they would not be behind the bars for more than 24 hours. Male police often find themselves in difficulty if they try to arrest a woman as evidenced by an incident that occurred on McLeod Road, Lahore, recently. An ASI was trying to get a woman to court; she was resisting and quickly enlisted the help of bystanders. Similar reports are not uncommon.
The remedy is, on the face of it, simple — recruit more women into the police and train them as interrogators. In practice, not so simple. A job in the police force, even allowing for the fact that more women are coming into the workplace — is not high on the list for career-minded women. The police forces are not women-friendly employers and in many ways epitomise the patriarchy and misogyny that characterises wider society. The reality is that women are going to commit crime, everything from murder to the white-collar crimes that are increasingly common as IT culture spreads far and wide. Police forces, whether they like it or not — and they most certainly will not — are going to have to adapt to an evolving environment of criminality. Women are a part of that and simply being a woman is not an entitlement to being above the law. What is needed is an effective response to this change through induction of more women into police forces and the fostering of a culture that encourages their entry into this profession.
pk.shafaqna.com
