The Normalisation of “Police Encounters” in Punjab

Shah Zaman Bhangar

Karachi: For years, police “encounter” stories in Sindh have followed a familiar, almost mechanical, script. A patrol team signals a suspicious vehicle to stop.

 The suspects open fire. A shootout follows. By morning, another press release announces the death of “dangerous criminals.”

But recently, Punjab appears to have taken this template into overdrive.

Almost daily, police statements emerge carrying strikingly identical narratives, differing only in the names of the dead and the districts in which they were killed.

The story is almost always the same.

Police claim they were transporting an arrested suspect to recover stolen property or identify a crime scene. Suddenly, armed accomplices allegedly ambush the police convoy in an attempt to free the suspect. 

In the exchange of fire, the detained suspect is killed, not by police bullets, but supposedly by gunfire from his own associates.

The alleged attackers, meanwhile, disappear into the darkness.

Read More: https://thepenpk.com/pipes-of-survival-rivers-of-neglect/

The inconsistencies in these accounts are difficult to ignore.

Despite dozens of suspects being killed in these operations, police officers rarely suffer serious injuries. In encounter after encounter, the imbalance remains extraordinary.

The supposed accomplices almost always escape without arrest, identification, or pursuit. No weapons are recovered from fleeing attackers. No follow-up operations produce meaningful results.

Many of these incidents are linked to the Crime Control Department (CCD), with reports emerging from districts across Punjab, from Lahore and Sahiwal to Gujranwala and Gujrat, all following nearly identical patterns.

At some point, repetition stops sounding like coincidence and begins to resemble policy.

Does Killing Suspects Reduce Crime?

Police authorities justify these encounters by describing the deceased as “hardened criminals” involved in robbery, rape, murder, and violent street crime.

But if these killings are truly an effective deterrent, where is the evidence?

Despite thousands of alleged encounters over the years, theft, robbery, organized crime, and heinous violence against children continue to plague society. Crime statistics do not reflect the dramatic collapse in criminal activity one would expect from such aggressive tactics.

This raises a disturbing possibility: encounter killings are not solving the crisis of law and order, they are merely masking the failure of the criminal justice system.

Street executions may create headlines, but they do not create justice.

Perhaps the most alarming aspect of this phenomenon is not the encounters themselves, but the institutional silence surrounding them.

Much of the media now reproduces police statements without scrutiny. Whether due to intimidation, exhaustion, or fear of repercussions, critical questioning has steadily disappeared.

Read More: https://thepenpk.com/graveyards-of-mobility/

Neither government nor opposition lawmakers have seriously challenged these killings on the Assembly floor. Demands for independent investigations remain rare.

The judiciary, constitutionally tasked with protecting fundamental rights, has also largely remained absent from the conversation. While organizations such as the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) have repeatedly expressed concern, their calls for transparency and accountability often fade into silence.

Supporters of these encounters argue that Pakistan’s judicial system is too slow, too weak, or too compromised to punish hardened criminals.

But this argument strikes at the heart of constitutional governance itself.

Under Pakistan’s Constitution:

• Article 9 guarantees the right to life and liberty.
• Article 10-A guarantees the right to a fair trial and due process.

If the police are allowed to act as judge, jury, and executioner, then what remains of the judiciary?

And if law enforcement agencies are considered incapable of collecting evidence strong enough for conviction, how can they simultaneously be trusted with the irreversible power to decide who deserves to die?

A weak justice system cannot be repaired through extrajudicial killings. It can only be repaired through reform, accountability, and institutional integrity.

A state loses moral authority when it adopts the methods of those it claims to fight.

In the 21st century, a system that relies on midnight encounters instead of courtroom evidence begins to resemble the lawlessness it promises to eliminate.

History offers a consistent lesson: systems built on fear, secrecy, and bloodshed eventually consume themselves. Media narratives can be controlled. Families can be intimidated.

Questions can be delayed.

But justice denied does not disappear.

Justice is not found in a dark alley after midnight.

Justice is found in a courtroom, under the light of the law.

Shah Zaman Bhangar is a senior journalist from interior Sindh with a strong command of human rights issues.

The blog is the writer’s opinion, it may or may not adhere to the organization’s editorial policy.