A good beginning

It's a time-honoured tradition of democratic governments that bosses at the top step down accepting responsibility of their subordinates' lapses that provoke serious public concern. Be it a railway accident or corruption scam or an error of judgement that leads to a major fiasco, not too infrequently the departmental heads offer to quit. But that did not happen following the cold-blooded murder of 19-year-old Sarfraz Shah in a Karachi public park at the hands of Rangers recently.
In fact, as the whole nation watched the point-blank shooting incident in anguish and agony. Both the Sindh Rangers' boss Major General Aijaz Chaudhry and Sindh Inspector General Police Fayyaz Leghari showed no sign of offering to accept the excess.
Let alone this, according to reports, they were busy covering up the crime of their minions. So, the Supreme Court took a suo motu notice of the incident and ordered their removal from Sindh within three days, for 'providing incorrect details' about the tragic episode. Will this one swallow make the summer one cannot say, but certainly an example has been set in Pakistan - even though it may not be a game-changer in the ongoing tussle between the organs of the State.
Unfortunately, over some years, the incidence of extra-judicial killings have acquired horrendous proportions. The police, particularly in the Punjab, seem to have perfected the art of eliminating what it believes to be the criminals in fake encounters. Instead of arresting the suspects and getting them punished through normal process of law the police find it convenient to eliminate them in fake encounters. And some in other paramilitary outfits like the FC and Rangers are too good at shooting at sight with little to go in between as justification.
How these trigger-happy soldiers killed five unarmed Chechens at Kharotabad, near Quetta, early this month is indeed the ultimate in savagery. In this case also their seniors spared no effort to distort the facts by projecting the victims as potential terrorists. Surely we would not have known the ghastly incidents at Kharotabad and the Karachi public park had these not been exposed by the intrepid media. Now that the conspiracy of silence over extra-judicial killings is being thwarted by the combined forces of judiciary and media, it is a welcome development and must be supported by all other segments of society.
The spirit of independent inquiry into extra-judicial killings and much-maligned fake police encounters is also catching up with our legislators. The National Assembly Standing Committee on Human Rights wants the perpetrators of extra-judicial killings be tried under the Anti-Terrorist Act, as against the norm of departmental inquiries that end nowhere.
In its meeting on Tuesday, the committee declared six such cases including the murders of Karachi youth Sarfraz Shah and journalist Saleem Shahzad, massacre of Chechens, Sialkot and Gojra incidents and Hazara killings as "test cases" which it would send to the prime minister for his order that these be tried by anti-terrorist courts. We have to go a long hard way to get rid of the curse of extra-judicial killings, but thanks to an independent judiciary and fearless media a beginning has been made.