Criminal enforcers

Express Tribune

01-07-2025

Listen to article
When those entrusted to protect the law become its most egregious violators, the damage done is not just to public trust but also to the very foundations of justice. Recently, seventy-seven kilograms of charas were recovered from an official police mobile van as it was being smuggled from Jamshoro to Karachi.
The accused, all serving policemen posted at the CIA Centre in Jamshoro, were caught red-handed — armed, in uniform, and using a government-issued vehicle to run narcotics. This case is a textbook example of what Section 155(c) of the Police Order, 2002 was designed to prevent: the misuse of official authority for wrongful gain. Yet it also exposes how legal safeguards remain ineffective when criminality is embedded within the institution itself.
Drug trafficking networks do not operate on blind trust. They rely on the complicity of those in power. That police vehicles and weapons were used points to a systemic loophole that allows criminal elements to nest within state structures. If such acts can be carried out so brazenly by those in uniform, one is forced to ask: how deep does this go?
For every such truck that is intercepted, how many slip through unchecked? How many more law enforcers are moonlighting as traffickers, shielded by the very authority meant to combat crime? These questions demand urgent answers — not only through court verdicts but through sweeping internal reforms and an independent accountability process.
Even though six police constables have been awarded life imprisonment, the verdict only scratches the surface. Unless law enforcement agencies confront this rot from within, these convictions will remain symbolic. The real test lies in whether this moment becomes a turning point or just another scandal buried beneath the weight of institutional silence. If those sworn to uphold the law can so easily betray it, then the battle against the drug trade is being lost.