Return of terror

So Shoaib Suddle is back in Karachi, this time, as the Inspector General Police. If Sind’s information minister is to be believed, he is called back to the province to improve the law and order situation. The funny thing is that Sind has been the most peaceful province in the past couple of years. Punjab has the highest number of crimes against women and was the hub of lawyers’ activism for the past year. Balochistan is dealing with an insurgency and don’t even get me started on NWFP with hot spots like Swat, North and South Waziristan and the law and order situation there. But only Sind was given this special treatment and was bestowed with the torture inducing presence of Dr. Suddle.

Everyone who has lived in Karachi during the 1990s knows what a man of courage Dr. Sahib has been. He was one of the people instrumental in the killing of Mir Murtaza Bhutto and he has been duly awarded by Mr Zardari (who was acquitted from Mir Murtaza murder case only last week) and is now the Inspector General. He was DIG Karachi then and was also named in Mir Murtaza Bhutto’s murder FIR. He was also IG Balochistan during the time of operations under the previous government. His track record at squashing dissenting voices is public knowledge.

I will not go into detail of what happened back then, but this reinstatement reminds me of two victims I personally knew. Imran Rizvi was a third year student at Dow Medical College when he was picked up by police in 1996. His family looked for him for two months and bribed hundreds of thousands of rupees to police officials before they could found out where Imran Rizvi was kept. It was another 9 months before he was released. But when he was released, he was unable to walk, one of his kidneys failed and he was so badly drugged throughout the nine month period that he lost his sanity. Even though both his parents were doctors and they spent all the money they had, their son could never recover. Now Dr. Hasan Rizvi’s son, who was studying to become a doctor himself cannot even sit straight and without help, when he speaks, his mouth dribbles and he needs to be given soft food as he cannot chew (his left jaw had to be rewired, it was broken and he was not given any medical treatment for twelve days, hence this disfigurement). Those of you who have seen the film ‘Khuda Ke Liye’ and cried when the actor Shan was shown on a wheel chair with a vacant look in his eyes and his mouth dribbling and called American government names, should know that much before 9-11 and Guantanamo bay, our police had been involved all kind of torturous activities in the name of policing and tortured many victims to that state of being. The police labeled Imran Rizvi as an MQM terrorist even though he never was involved with any political party and even if he had been involved, he would have been within his civil rights, but enjoying civil rights is such a luxury in this land of pure that we should not even talk about it. Imran Rizvi is now alive, but like a vegetable. His family fled Pakistan soon after he was recovered from police custody; they first moved to England and are now living in Montreal, Canada. His family paid a total of 900,000 rupees in bribes (back in 1990s) and what they got in return was a disabled son. This is how justice was provided under Dr. Suddle.

The other person I knew who was a victim of Dr. Suddle’s brand of policing was a former colleague Sabeen Jatoi whose father Ashiq Jatoi was killed along with Mir Murtaza Bhutto. Having lost a parent myself, I know how painful it is to deal with it everyday but if one of your parents are killed and left to bleed on road and you know who did it and the perpetrators are not only running free but are being honoured as moral and upright citizens and sage politicians, your misery and rage knows no bounds. I can only imagine what people like Fatima Bhutto, Sabeen Jatoi, Dr Hasan Rizvi’s family must have felt when Sind Information Minister Shazia Murri praised Dr. Suddle to skies.

Adresher Cowasjee rightly wrote in his column that “Iman and insanyat are rare commodities in this land of ours. Until someone possessing both qualities springs up from somewhere to lead us, we will remain as we are — a failing state,” and a state that fails its citizen cannot last long.


PS: A link to Fatima Bhutto's article about how the policemen, who were involved in Murtaza Bhutto's murder were awarded.