Police Harassment and Registration of the First

Inefficiency, corruption, harassment and deliberate non-registration of the FIR are some major police performance issues that affect dispensation of justice.

Non-registration of the FIR is a serious access-to-justice issue. Although fieldwork documented that FIRs are widely withheld in rural Sindh and Balochistan, the problem also persists in Punjab and NWFP. In  case in rural Rawalpindi, an influential party was able to get a false FIR registered, besides tampering with the revenue record and the medical report. In NWFP too, influential parties were able to sway things their way. Yet the magnitude of the problem is far greater in Sindh and Balochistan.

The police in Sindh had introduced an innovation in the registration of complaints. When an aggrieved party went to the police to record its complaint, instead of registering the FIR required under the law, the police registered a so-called NC (non-official complaint on a plain piece of paper). The objective was to dismiss the complaint without any official record, after extorting bribes from one or both parties. People spent money to even get their NC noted and the other party paid money to ward it off. In a few cases, the NC is changed into a formal FIR, whereas in most cases it is eventually dismissed, without ever placing the matter on record.

 

In rural Balochistan, which is 90% tribal, approaching the tehsildar and “levies” (tribal areas police) without the sardar’s permission is strongly discouraged by the tribal system of justice. In the Dera Bugti area, any-one found guilty of getting an FIR registered without the sardar’s prior consent is find Rs.25,000. Such unlawful practices are an effective deterrent against access to justice. An analysis of case files in Sibi confirmed these trends.

A small percentage of cases still do get registered with the police or levies in tribal Balochistan. However, there is a sizeable time lag between the occurrence of crime and the registration of an FIR. In Sibi, for instance, if makes sense given the tribal system of justice and the investigation time granted to the office of the tehsildar. In Larkana, however, non-registration of the FIR is even more appalling. The registration/occurrence of crime ratio is relatively better in Punjab and NWFP.

Besides abusing its authority to block access to justice, the police also exploits legal loopholes to harass citizens, particularly the less influential and the poor. The sight of a traffic policeman harassing cyclists, motorcyclists and taxi drivers is familiar to people living in big cities. It does not, however, end there. The study found from sampled case files that several laws, such as the Ehtaram-e-Ramazan Act, the Price Control Ordinance, the Prohibition of Liquour Ordinance and Drugs Act are widely used to extort money and harass people. This phenomenon is particularly noticeable in rural Sindh and NWFP. Small shopkeepers and roadside stall holders were prosecuted for overcharging. The price controlling power under these laws gave the police yet another opportunity for extortion.

In NWFP, people had found a way around police harassment. Instead of bribing the police, they let themselves be challaned (charged) and produced before the court. Most of those charged pleaded guilty on their first appearance I the court. The punishment for such crimes is generally detention till the rising of court and/or a fine of a few hundred rupees. Thus, opting for such convictions was preferred over bribing the police and encouraging harassment. The judiciary in NWFP has routinized its response in such convictions.

In Sindh, the level of harassment is much higher. A few sampled cases involving violations of Ehtaram-e-Ramazan provided evidence of police harassment in connivance with the judicial process. People were generally not aware of the advantage of pleading guilty to wriggle out of the process. They were trapped in the litigation process, lest they bribed the police to avoid being charged. The guilty plea trend is, however, slowly catching up. In one criminal case in Lrkana, a shopkeeper was arrested for violating the sanctity of the holy month of Ramazan. He pleaded guilty, was convicted the same day and fined Rs. 50. Price control cases in Larkana were similar to those in Haripur and the accused pleaded guilty. This kind of police harassment also applied to cases involving possession of hashish, which is widely consumed in rural NWFP.

The following-up survey indicated that the shopkeeper who pleaded guilty in Larkana is better off than the average person in rural Sindh. He was cleaver enough not to get trapped by the system. In similar case, a few shopkeepers who were caught pleaded guilty, were charged Rs. 50 each and discharged. This is the tactic used by less influential people to escaped the shackles of the police and judiciary.

Thus, besides money and socio-economic status, knowledge of court procedures proved an asset these shopkeeper. Poor hashish addicts in rural Sindh were not aware of the possibility of getting off the hook by pleading guilty. However, there is a price to pay. Those convicted are disqualified from government service or entry into public educational institutions. Most of those charged with petty crime were willing to pay this price rather than deal with the judicial process.

A third critical role of the police is the prosecution of the police is the prosecution of crimes. The police does not seem to be effectively dispensing its duties of prosecution. In a fraud case in urban Rawalpindi, an influential person, previously employed at an overseas construction management enterprise, committed fraud and the court had issued warrants for his arrest. The prosecution officer appeared in the court hearing claiming his inability to find the accused, who was running an overseas recruitment agency to swindle money from vulnerable people living in nearby towns and villages with false promises of sending them abroad. He was also wanted in another similar fraud case. The survey team was able to find his house using the address given in the case file and interviewed him too, even though the police was unable to arrest him on court orders. He lived in a spacious two-kanal (1200 sq yds) house in a posh colony in Rawalpindi Cantonment. The prosecution officer lied to the court, hearing after hearing. Commenting on the judicial process, one of the main complainants who lived in a nearby village said.

I am disappointed with the court procedures and attitude. We spend more money on our visits to M.M. Khan (the accused’s) office and court than the original amount (Rs.5,000) due to us. Finally, all of us lost hope and decided to forget about our money and never to visit the court again. I don’t know if the case is still in the court or not. There is no law for the poor. Nobody can take action against the rich. We the poor are to suffer.

Since the effective implementation of separation of the judiciary from the executive in 1997, High Courts have come up with more effective ways to deal with criminal cases. They have allocated a certain number of police stations to a judge who acts as a magistrate in criminal cases. This may relatively improve the magistrate’s powers vis-à-vis the police. However, we did not observe its effectiveness in our fieldwork.