What did the son of a Punjab-VVIP do when his minister-friend could not be accommodated in a 5-star hotel in Bhurban?
He stood at the entrance to the lobby and pissed into a flower-pot. Then he ordered the local administration to raid the hotel, harass the guests and arrest members of the staff. This is VVIP culture in full bloom.
If we discount the sallies made by RAW, ninety percent of crime is home-grown; out of this, over half is caused by those who are supposed to eliminate it. Dacoits and rapists without political linkages are small-time amateurs imitating those in power. Punjab is top of the list in disorder and the roots of this disorder go directly into the provincial assembly and the Punjabi ‘leaders’ who dominate the National Assembly.
Punjab is the Bermuda Triangle of violent crime. It is presided over by a chief minister who, far from moving against his own ‘king-maker’ MPAs, rarely abides by the law under pressure. His bragging statements about how he is going to exterminate outlaws with his own hands have become funny titbits with which newspapers lighten their columns. His own anti-corruption department has just declared that large areas of the province have been awarded exemption from prosecution for political reasons.
The criminalisation of the police has become old hat as a topic of discussion. IGs hide behind references to the past: that thousands of ‘sifarishi’ criminals were inducted into the police by the IJI government and later joined the provincial underworld. What they can’t say is that the rulers of today are directly involved in violent crime. Far from purging an infected department, they continue to use the police in a manner far more destructive of public order than ever before.
The truth is that Sardar Arif Nakai presides over a criminalised government. He has no control over Gujrat and its dozen brawling gangs who have reduced the citizenry to whimpering dogs. He has no control over Sheikhupura where gangs hold government departments to ransom and one gang forces vehicles going to Faisalabad to cough up ‘protection money’ at the Sheikupura crossing. In the Sialkot-Narowal-Shakargarh area, dacoits and extortionists have declared the territory out-of-bounds for the government, and police officers take orders from them rather than Sardar Nakai.
In Gujranwala, a famous politician-goon controls the surrounding countryside where his men walk around with kalashnikov in one hand and a bag of heroin in the other, forcibly selling the stuff to a tyrannised population. There are place-names like Wahndo, Narang Mandi, Chchani, etc, that have become synonymous with the death of the state. Newspapers carry stories about the fate of those rare police officers and magistrates who dare to defy local gangs by being honest. Politicians who control the bureaucracy shun going to their areas of influence for fear of being killed in the vendettas they have themselves spawned to get into power.
Particularly vulnerable is that part of Punjab territory which abuts the Indian border. Small-time smugglers have become local gang-leaders because they share the loot with civil and paramilitary authorities in the area. These borderland hoods have spread their ‘authority’ into nearby towns and have taken over local markets through the accursed practice of ‘goonda tax’ or protection money. From here the next step is control of the local government whose elections are the cause of never-ending mayhem among gangs. In this environment of violence, the local MNA and MPA seeks his electoral victory. In Central Punjab today, most politicians have risen to political power on the shoulders of the local mafiosi whom they are committed to protect from the legal power of the state.
If Sardar Nakai is powerless or otherwise unable to grasp the reality, is the Punjab governor in a better position? Citizens can now tell from the tribal names of ministers and MPAs the nature and variety of crime they commit or protect in their areas. What bells ring in the mind of General (Retd) Saroop Khan when he reads Awan, Gujjar, Chaudhary, Virk, Gunjial, Dogar, Vario in the text of the crime stories that appear in the scared press of Lahore? How does he react to the news that old city politicians are grabbing land in these mafia-ridden areas and building their criminal retreats there?
The law no longer trickles down to the people to protect the common man and punish the outlaw; lawlessness boils up from the underworld to infect the executive and the legislator. The calculus of power is such that the government is compelled to promote the outlaw politician to keep its majority in the legislature. MPAs and MNAs are busy peddling drugs and extorting money from the departments they control.
There is violence in this dispensation which infects the common man and forces our deprived youth into violent crime. The politician is protected by the state and the mafiosi he patronises. The law-abiding citizen’s life and property are at risk. For how long can we remain silent spectators to the rape of Pakistan?