essay on crime in pakistan

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Blood on the street: violence, crime, and policing in Karachi

Vanda Felbab-Brown

Introduction

With 56 percent of the world’s population today living in urban spaces and 70 percent projected to do so by 2050,[1] major cities of the world play an ever-larger role in the 21 st century global system, power distribution, and public policies. Decisions of city governments significantly influence major transnational issues—from climate change, global financial and trade patterns, to poverty alleviation, disease mitigation and refugee flows. More than ever, a country’s governing capacity and the legitimacy of its government are shaped by how it suppresses crime and delivers order in urban areas, a major challenge for many countries.[2] Many cities in Africa and Latin America struggle to deliver effective public security, despite receiving significant international assistance. Much less policy and academic focus has been devoted to urban public order management in Asia, including specifically Karachi, even though the city is a major world megapolis, a significant global hub of legal and illegal trade, and source of transnational and local violence, including terrorism. 

Based on fieldwork I conducted in Karachi in 2016 and supplemented by subsequent remote interviews, this article analyzes the sources of insecurity and violence in Karachi since the 1990s, focusing especially on the period between 2008 and 2023. Through interviews with security and police officials, military and paramilitary forces officers, politicians, civil society and business community representatives, members of criminal gangs, and security experts, the article assesses the effectiveness of anti-crime measures adopted in the city. Examining what has worked well and what policies have been deficient is a valuable source of lessons for other countries. It is also important because crime and terrorism are again rising in Karachi, the city’s residents are demanding better public safety.

For decades, and intensely so over the past twenty years, Karachi has struggled with violence, insecurity, and criminality. The city governments as well as Pakistan’s national authorities have at times either yielded or purposefully outsourced the delivery of order, safety, and other public goods to nonstate armed actors. The provision of these essential services by Karachi’s criminal and militant groups has thus regularly outcompeted their provision by the state, with the city’s nonstate armed actors hence acquiring significant political capital with Karachi’s residents.

From 2008 to 2015, the megapolis of between 20 million and 25 million people and Pakistan’s most important economic engine, experienced a particularly intense wave of violence. Homicides surpassed 2,000 a year, with war-like firearm exchanges on the streets. Extortions and kidnappings skyrocketed. Both the poor and the affluent were significantly affected. Many businesses shut down, and wealthy elites moved away. The local and federal government scrambled for a response.

For decades, police forces in Karachi have been under-resourced, incompetent, corrupt, politicized, and infiltrated by criminal groups. The justice system in the city—as well as nationally—suffers many deficiencies. Thus, to bring violence down, the local, state, and federal governments have repeatedly deployed official paramilitary forces to address the violence.

And indeed, in important ways, government policies did manage to suppress crucial aspects of violence, most importantly homicides. But other types of crime, terrorism, and militancy continue to be a challenge, and policing remains problematic and inadequate.[3] Moreover, the costs of the adopted law enforcement patterns have been severe in terms of civil liberties and human rights. The paramilitary forces, the Sindh Rangers, like the police in the city, turned out to be highly violent and perpetrated extensive and serious human rights violations.

In response to the criminal, political, ethnic, and terrorist violence, Karachi’s business community and civil society also mobilized. Going far beyond the civil society assistance to police forces found, for example, in Colombia’s Medellín, Brazil’s Sao Paulo, or Mexico’s Ciudad Juárez, Karachi’s business community established an essentially private police force with an extraordinary scope of activities. In contrast, the civil society activism emerged primarily against and as a result of the state repression of the Pashtun minority that suffered from law enforcement’s dragnets.

Yet a decade later, the paramilitary forces remain the principal policing force in the city. And their activities have gone far beyond their official mandate to combat violence. Supported by other law enforcement actors in the city, the Rangers have completely redesigned the political landscape of Karachi, selectively dismantling some political parties through the arrests of their members, while extra-legally empowering and privileging other parties. They have also increased their involvement in the city’s public management as well as its illegal economies, such as land grabbing and the criminalized delivery of services, including water.

Armed Security Karachi, Credit:  Benny Lin ,  CC BY-NC 2.0

The Context

Between 2010 and 2015, violence in Karachi reached dramatic levels. In 2012, 2,174 were reported killed;[4] escalating to a record 2,700 in 2013. These deaths included targeted killings by political parties; warfare by and among jihadists; and murders by organized crime groups, often linked to politicians and political parties. Compounding the sense of insecurity was a dramatic terrorist attack on Karachi’s airport in July 2014.[5] By 2017, homicides, targeted killings, terrorist attacks, kidnappings, and extortions perpetrated by non-state actors declined by as much as 90 percent in the various categories. What explains the decline?

For decades, Karachi has been experiencing a dramatic, uncontrolled population growth, expanding from a mere 435,0000 residents in the early 1940s to some 25 million today.[6] The city’s historic and changing ethnic composition and demographics have shaped its economic development, urban planning, and governance—as well as its instability, violence, and organized crime.

One facet of Karachi is its economic power. With its large financial, textile, and manufacturing sectors, Karachi generates approximately 50 percent of Pakistan’s economic revenue (about $290 billion annually) and 90 percent of the province of Sindh.[7] It also handles 95 percent of Pakistan’s foreign trade and 30 percent of its manufacturing. It is the seat of Pakistan’s economic elite, with 90 percent of the headquarters of Pakistani banks, financial institutions, and multinational corporations located in Karachi.[8]

Another facet of Karachi is its privation: Some 70 percent of Karachi residents are poor, with half of the population living in squatter settlements known as katchi abadis .[9] These informal settlements mostly lack pumped water, sewage, and formal legal electricity hookups.[10]

Karachi’s decades-long poor exclusionary governance has eviscerated the city’s planning, organizational capacities, and provision of public goods. Instead, the delivery of public goods has, to a large extent, become privatized. Both in the public and private domains, or when delivered by what Karachi residents call mafias —a combination of organized crime groups and politicians—the delivery of essential services is politicized. The deep ethnic rivalries generating community competition over legal and illegal rents and bureaucratic appointments have resulted in and often purposefully generated and utilized criminal and street violence.

Drivers of violence

Waves of violence in Karachi, including the 2010-2013 iteration, have been driven by multiple factors: inter-communal hostility provoked and exploited by the campaigns of ethnically-oriented politicians and political parties; violence by the state, exacerbated by the weakness of the city’s police; organized crime and political competition over illicit economies and the provision of public services in the city; and the belligerence of jihadi militants and terrorists.

Political Parties            

Much of Karachi’s violence results from the strategic use of violence by ethnically-based political parties to secure electoral votes, government appointments, and economic rents. Between 2007 and 2013, almost all of the city’s ethnic groups and their political parties engaged in violence against their political, ethnic, and business opponents, resulting in the deaths of over 7,000 people.[11]      

The political-ethnic violence has often taken place between the Mohajirs and the Sindhis and between the Mohajirs and the Pashtuns and Baloch. The Mohajirs (literally refugees) are the Urdu-speaking migrants from India and their descendants. The 1947 partition of India that gave birth to Pakistan resulted in millions of Mohajirs arriving in the city. Almost overnight their influx reversed the ethnic balance in the city, shrinking the percentage of the previously dominant Sindhis from 60 to 14 percent (and less than 10 percent today) and increasing the presence of the Mohajirs from a mere 6 percent to well over 54 percent.[12] The Mohajirs stacked the city’s government institutions and bureaucratic appointments with their ethnic brethren, creating deep-seated resentment of the Sindhis and setting up a perpetual battle between the city’s government and the Sindhi-dominated provincial government. The Sindhis are still dominant in the rural areas of the Sindh Province of which Karachi is the capital.

Federal politics have shaped Karachi’s endless ethnic rivalries. The 1970s government of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, with his Pakistan People Party (PPP), favored the Sindhis, while the military regime of General Zia-ul-Haq (1977-1988) sought to weaken the PPP by supporting the creation of a Mohajir political party, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM).[13] General Pervez Musharraf similarly sought to use the MQM to subjugate the PPP.[14] Indeed, Pakistan’s military has applied the same rule-and-divide strategy in Karachi that it uses throughout the country—at various times using the MQM to undermine the PPP’s  attempt to weaken the military’s dominance of Pakistan’s politics and governance and at other times, such as in the 2010s and 2020s, turning on the MQM.

The political competition unleashed repeated violence in Karachi during the 1980s and 1990s as the Mohajirs sought to control governing structures and appointments – including, the lucrative Karachi Port Trust, Karachi Municipal Corporation and Karachi Development Authority—and the resulting patronage and votes. To obtain these rents and political capital, they often used street violence by armed wings.[15]

Since the 1980s, many Pakistani Pashtun migrants and Afghan refugees further altered Karachi’s ethnic balance and its power conflicts. By 2025, Pashtuns are projected to outnumber the Mohajirs,[16] yet they are the most politically and economically marginalized ethnic group in Karachi. While the Mohajir-Sindhi violence declined in the 1990s, ethnic violence escalated between the Mohajirs and Pashtuns and Balochs, particularly after the 2008 elections.[17]

In addition to having their own armed wings, the political parties established clientelistic relationships and alliances with organized crime groups to secure votes and engage in extortion and racketeering in the city, known in Karachi as the bhatta economy.

Illicit Economies, Criminal Groups, and Politics

As a crucial global port and gateway to Pakistan and Afghanistan, and a megacity of many unemployed, Karachi is also, not surprisingly, a significant hub of illicit economies and organized crime. The city’s crime economy overall is estimated at a $3 billion annually[18] and features drug trafficking,[19] arms smuggling, human smuggling, timber trafficking, extortion, gambling, and kidnapping as well as a variety of other predatory crimes.[20]  These illicit economies are to various degrees dominated by organized crime or militant groups.

The under-delivery and privatization of basic services have provided further opportunities for criminalization and violence as well as extensive connections to politics. Informal and outright illicit economies and extensive theft have emerged in land access, electricity and water delivery,[21] as well as transportation. These illicit economies are run by organized crime groups connected to politicians and political parties – networks to which Karachi residents refer to as “mafias.”

Access to land is a prime example of such politically-linked criminalization. Both public and private land is frequently stolen and usurped by criminals, politicians, and/or state agents such as the Sindh Rangers and the military, whether directly by them or through proxies for their benefit. It is also taken over the city’s many squatters.[22] Land has thus become the city’s most prized and contested commodity, with federal, provincial, and local land-owning agencies, military cantonments, corporate entities and formal and informal developers fighting for land rights.[23]

Public transportation is largely defunct. Medical services are equally underprovided, delivered to many by charities or Islamist parties and the political proxies of Jihadist groups, such as Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (after state pressure renamed Jammat-ud-Dawa). In the political contestation surrounding the 2008 elections, the PPP and MQM used their political heft to get access for their clients to the city’s hospitals and clinics.[24] Meanwhile, the rich receive their medical treatment in Dubai, London, or the United States.

Many criminal groups in Karachi are ethnically based and have close, if complex, relations with the political party of their ethnicity. The Peoples Aman Committee (PAC) gang operating in the Lyari subdivision of Karachi is a prime example of these dynamics. For years, in addition to running its own criminal rackets such as drug trafficking and extortion, the PAC would also do some of the dirty work of its political patron, the PPP.  At the same time, the PAC sought to cultivate the Karachi’s top police officials and corrupt Sindh Rangers as well as business and political elite even while extorting them.[25]

But like many other criminal gangs and militant groups,[26] the PAC sought to build its political capital with local populations by investing some of its proceeds from its criminal activities in public welfare schemes.[27] Following a major 2011 battle with the Karachi police during which not just the PAC, but the entire Lyari subdivision were de facto starved in a siege, the PAC also came to distribute water and food to Lyari’s residents. It also regulated street crime in the subdivision by advancing its own rackets. Under the PAC rule, carjacking, cellphone snatching, and robberies decreased compared to previous periods and other parts of the city.[28] The PAC supported and sponsored NGOs seeking to bring hospitals and schools to Lyari, one symbolically located in a gang’s former torture house.[29] In contrast, between 2001 and 2008 when MQM’s political power was high during the presidency of Gen. Pervez Musharraf, nothing had been built in Lyari. The discrimination was a blatant retaliation by the Mohajir MQM against the Sindhis.

But with its own political capital rising, the PAC started chaffing at the bid of its political patron, the PPP. It began cutting significantly into the PPP’s electoral base and challenging its orders.[30] While once essentially subservient to the politicians, the PAC crime gang began dictating the terms to the PPP, such as by selecting its own PPP candidates for the subdivision. [31]

Jihadist Militancy and Sectarian Conflict

Multiple highly dangerous jihadist terrorist groups operate in the city, compete over turf and illicit rackets, fundraise, organize violent operations, and take shelter from operations by the Pakistani military during occasional periods when the military decides to confront some of them as opposed to mostly coddling them.[32] The anti-India and Kashmir-focused Laskhar-e-Tayyaba (LeT)/ Jammat-ud-Dawa (that carried out the 2008 attack on Mumbai’s Taj Mahal hotel and other sites and killed over 160 people) and Jaish-e-Mohammad (that, along w LeT, carried out the 2001 attack on India’s parliament) and the anti-Shia Lashkar-e-Jhangvi have used the city as a crucial base for decades. They are extensively linked to the city’s many madrasas (Islamic schools). Sectarian violence between Pakistan’s predominant Sunni majority and Shia minority was unleashed in the 1980s by the Zia regime’s Islamization policies that patronized Deobandi extremist groups as a means of internal control and a counter to Shia mobilization after Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution. Stoked by the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran since, the sectarian contestation often explodes into violence in Karachi, where in 2012 and 2013, at least 100 sectarian killings took place each year.[33] After 9-11, Al Qaeda also used Karachi as a key operating area and killed the U.S. Wall Street Journal ’s correspondent Daniel Pearl there.

Among the more recent arrivals, about a decade and half ago, has been the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a terrorist group displaced to Karachi as a result of Pakistan’s military operations in the province of Khyber Pakthunkhwa and previously autonomous tribal areas (now incorporated into KPK). As the presence of TTP in Karachi grew to some 8,000 members in 2013, so did violence.[34] Although also predominantly Pahstun, the TTP intensely focused violence on the anti-militant Pashtun party Awami National Party (ANP). By the end of 2013, the TTP’s violent actions had forced the ANP to close down 70 percent of its offices in the city.[35] In fact, in the runup to the 2013 elections, the TTP ratcheted up violence against all political parties that opposed it, attempting to prevent them from campaigning.[36]

In addition to targeting the ANP and other political parties, TTP also sought to take over various of the city’s illicit economies and rackets, such as land theft and control, and aggressively moved into extortion. Moving into extortion in revenue-rich Karachi allowed the TTP to move beyond inefficient bank robberies, one of its initial funding approaches. Neighborhoods, such as Lyari, became war zones and no-go zones for the state. Gang or jihadi takeovers of areas displaced male residents, leaving women without protection and economic livelihoods and subject to sexual violence.[37] In addition to fighting organized criminal groups for control over illicit rents, TTP hired local criminals for the same purpose and to finance jihad. In turn, criminals allied with TTP used the alliance to strengthen their hand against local police (mostly in on the illicit take) and criminal rivals.

Policy Responses    

Much of the state’s response to the post-2010 violence in Karachi, as has been the case historically as well, has centered on heavy-handed law enforcement and military crackdowns. Anti-crime socio-economic components or other structural and institutional reforms have been inadequate. Civil society mobilization has played a role in the policy responses, but at times, such mobilization has been heavily skewed toward the interests and safety of the elite.

Law Enforcement

In 2012 and 2013, the Karachi police force found itself unable to cope with the rising violence, extortion, jihadism, and sense of panic in the city. Out of a nominal police force of 29,000 officers, only some 8,000 worked at any one time.[38] Moreover, 162 police officers, including one of Karachi’s top counterterrorism officials, were killed in the city in the first part of 2013[39] severely undermining already poor morale. For decades, the police force in the city (as elsewhere in Pakistan) has also been subject to intense politicization, from the highest senior level appointments to beat cops. It tended to compensate for its lack of investigative and preventative capacities with brutality.

In September 2013, amidst the security crisis, Pakistan’s federal government authorized the deployment of 11,000 paramilitary Sindh Rangers to Karachi, replicating similar policy moves of the 1990s. Nominally under Pakistan’s Ministry of Interior, but following the military’s command, the Rangers were to focus on terrorism, political killings, extortion, and kidnapping for ransom.

Under the 2013 Protection of Pakistan Ordinance, made law in 2014 as the Protection of Pakistan Act,[40] the Rangers were given special powers and authorized to shoot-to-kill, shoot-on-sight, and to detain suspects for 90 days without charge. But they did not have any actual investigation and prosecution mandates, consigned to acting against in flagrante crimes and mounting deterrence patrolling. A subsequent anti-terrorism act, the December 2014 National Action Plan, also expanded the military’s role in internal policing. It shifted counterterrorism judicial processes to the opaque unaccountable military justice system and reversed the burden of proof for alleged terrorists: The accused now had to prove that they were not terrorists.[41] Although the operation was to be time-bound, the Rangers’ mandate was repeatedly extended.

Officially, the law enforcement efforts in Karachi were defined as a targeted operation focusing on a list of 450 designated killers (many hitmen for political parties), terrorists, kidnappers, and leaders of extortion rings. Quickly, however, the law enforcement actions became a much broader dragnet scheme. Between September 2013 and mid-2018, the Rangers claimed to have arrested and handed over to police or the courts almost 11,000 people in 14,327 raids.[42] Yet, many detainees were released without charge; others disappeared, perhaps still held in detention or killed.

The police supplemented those operations with its own repression. The police chief during the Rangers’ initial operations, Superintendent Anwar Ahmed known as Rao Anwar, for example, was notorious for his bloodlust for encounter killings.[43] Senior police officials were also allegedly offering cash rewards to subordinates for extrajudicial killings. In 2017 alone, Karachi police killed “184 criminals and 7,373 terrorists” in 480 police encounters.[44]

The law enforcement operations also sought to establish Ranger and law enforcement presence in areas that became no-go places for the police, such as Lyari. While putting heavy pressure on some criminal gangs, the operations tended to be repressive, abusive, and indiscriminate, often cordoning off large areas, mounting extensive and aggressive house searches, and detaining scores of people. Residents who dared protest against the heavy-handedness or other problematic policies, such as wholesale intimidation of fishermen by law enforcement actors or government seizures of coastal land, were labeled supporters of Lyari gangs or terrorist groups and arrested as well.[45]

MQM became a primary target of the Rangers’ operation. Often without diligent investigations and evidence, the law enforcement forces sought to destroy the armed wings of the party and the party itself through extrajudicial killings and disappearances.[46] Between 2013 and 2017, the bodies of at least 70 MQM male activists were found and more than 120 went missing.[47] The PPP was also targeted, with its members, including prominent officials, arrested on various charges, though to a lesser degree than those of the MQM.

The counterterrorism operations also showed selectivity, prioritizing anti-Pakistan, but not anti-India terrorist groups. Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, al Qaeda, and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi were principally targeted. After LeJ reduced its attacks against India and instead began killing Pakistani security officials, it also came into the Rangers’ crosshairs. Other groups, such as the bloody sectarian Sunni Ahle Sunant Wal Jammat (formerly Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan) and LeT/JD were let off the hook.

But even with its policy selectivity, the Rangers’ overall dragnet approach compounded Pakistan’s long-standing problem: the weakness of prosecution. With the police lacking investigative capacities and the Rangers legal authorization for investigations, torture became a frequent method to extract confessions.  In response to complaints by human rights groups, the Rangers and police claimed that they had no alternative but to kill the alleged terrorists and criminals because the courts would free them otherwise.[48]

Overwhelmed, under-resourced, politicized, and militarized, Pakistan’s justice system regularly features cases not adjudicated for years and sometimes even decades. A popular saying goes: “In Pakistan, you hire a lawyer and buy a judge.”  Only rarely do courts take up human rights protection issues or indict police or Ranger officials for even egregious human rights violations.

While the Rangers’ dragnet was under way, no adequate attempt to reform the police in Karachi or in Sindh was undertaken. Individual police commanders were merely reshuffled among posts, rarely altogether dismissed. In May 2016, the Sindh government authorized the recruitment of 8,000 additional police officers for Karachi to be trained by the army, but only a small portion ended up, in fact, recruited. Many top officers and beat cops continued to embrace highly repressive ways.

While state violence shot up, the violence perpetrated by nonstate actors declined dramatically and swiftly.Targeted killings diminished from 965 in 2013 to two in 2018; reported extortion cases from 1,524 in 2013 to 31 in 2018; and kidnapping for ransom from 174 in 2013 to five in 2018.[49] From January to April 2019, Karachi experienced 12 targeted killings.[50] Yet, the Rangers and police continued to mount raids, such as in Lyari in May 2019. Terrorist incidents also decreased—from a 2015 peak of 199 (when TTP responded to counterterrorism actions with intensified aggression of its own) to 16 in 2016 and zero in 2017.[51] Two significant terrorist incidents, nonetheless, took place in Karachi in 2018.

A problematic side-effect of the operations was the Rangers’ takeover of the city’s various illicit economic rackets. Widespread allegations emerged about the Rangers’ and police role in extortion and illegal appropriation of valuable resources, such as real estate, in their areas of operation.[52] Vendors who had previously paid extortion fees to the MQM now complained that they had to pay much higher rates to the Rangers and police.[53] The Rangers also expanded their already extensive involvement in Karachi’s lucrative water management and illicit water economy, at times alleged to usurp large quantities of water and charge predatory rates.[54] Yet despite the Rangers’ official role in the city’s water management, public access did not improve and by May 2019, Karachi was again in the midst of another water crisis.

The Rangers’ presence in Karachi also became an official drain on the city’s budgets as the Rangers also demanded larger government allocations for their salaries, equipment, schools, and health care.

Civil Society Mobilization

In response to the violence engulfing the city and debilitating business activities of Pakistan’s economic juggernaut, the civil society mobilization featured a mix of business community efforts to protect its economic interests and broader civil rights activism. But the business community’s response went far beyond assisting law enforcement forces in beefing up their capacity as has occurred in Mexico’s Cuidad Juárez, Tijuana, or Monterrey, or Colombia’s Medellín, for example.[55] The business community’s actions amounted essentially to the creation of a private police force for the elite, supplementing and supplanting Karachi’s police. While many elites around the world react to intense urban violence by hiring private security companies, the Citizens-Police Liaison Committee (CPLC), a de facto private elite police unit, stands in a class of its own.                   

The Business Community Response: Private Police and Applause for Repression

Since its establishment in 1989, the CPLC has focused on countering extortion and kidnapping of Karachi’s rich,[56] successfully tackling Karachi’s extortion rackets targeting the affluent during the 1990s and since. However, like other institutions in Karachi, the CPLC was not able to withstand the intensification of political and ethnic divisions in the city.[57] Its effectiveness made it a valuable asset for the city’s political class to seek to appropriate. Thus, in the second half of the 1990s, the CPLC became closely aligned with the MQM.[58]

Even so, the CPLC developed and maintained a highly organized and sophisticated system for tracking criminal activity.[59] Extraordinarily, police stations report their crime statistics to the CPLC on a daily basis. The CPLC has had those statistics computerized since the 1990s, unlike those police who still frequently handle pieces of paper. With a paid staff of 100 and an additional 80 volunteers, the CPLC also has access to cellphone company data, knowing which phone numbers are registered, and claiming to have the capacity to authorize cell phone tracking.[60]   

Not only does the CPLC support the police and cooperate closely with the Rangers, but it also conducts independent investigations and surveillance, such as during anti-kidnapping operations that target the affluent and their political clients, as well as in some homicide investigations. From 1989 to 2017, the CPLC claimed to have handled over 1,300 cases.[61]

The CPLC’s success has consistently won the accolades—and financial support—of the business community. Karachi’s business community has equally praised the military’s and Rangers’ operations in Karachi, despite their extensive human rights abuses.[62]

Pashtun Human Rights Movement

The post-2016 decline in terrorist violence and the weakening of TTP in Karachi did not end the dragnet repression of Pakistani law enforcement against the Pashtun community in the city. Throughout 2017, many Pashtun residents of the city continued to be treated heavy-handedly as terrorist suspects.  In January 2018, four young Pashtun men were killed by Karachi police in an encounter killing and subsequently accused of belonging to a militant group.[63] The operation might easily have turned out to be one of many such encounter killings, but this time, it set off a large-scale human rights mobilization by the Pashtun community—the Pashtun Protection Movement (PTM).

The PTM sought to bring some accountability to the pervasive impunity of Pakistani law enforcement forces. For example, in the wake of widespread outrage at the killings, Police Superintendent Anwar Rao was finally indicted on murder charges for his decades-long role in extrajudicial killings and arrested. Yet in January 2023, he was acquitted.[64]

Manipulating Politics: The Elections of Imran Khan

During the post-2013 Karachi operations, Pakistan’s military and its subordinate agencies, such as the Sindh Rangers, took to heart the criticism of their 1990s operations—unless politics in Karachi were cleaned up and defanged of their violent proxies, violence would return. But instead of diligently prosecuting political connections to murders, Pakistan’s military and the Rangers set out to destroy the MQM.

At first, through 2017, the military and Rangers sought to split the MQM and create a new political power in the city around the former MQM mayor Mustafa Kamal. The Rangers and police allegedly pressured MQM members, operatives, and councilors to defect to Mustafa Kamal. Scores of MQM members released from the Rangers’ sometimes prolonged detention, in fact, joined Kamal’s new political party.[65]

But when Kamal failed to attract MQM’s political base and outmaneuver its machinery, the military threw its support behind a different politician in Karachi—Imran Khan. A former world-renowned cricket player and an Oxford playboy, Imran Khan entered Pakistani politics in the 1990s, refashioning himself as a born-again Muslim, religious conservative, and opponent of U.S. military actions in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s cooperation with the United States in counterterrorism operations. For two decades, his political party, Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI), won barely a seat in regional or national elections. But by 2013, Imran Khan’s Pakistan’s PTI gained sufficient support to become Karachi’s second largest party.

During the July 2018 national elections in Pakistan, the military did everything possible to support the PTI and Imran Khan and sabotage the chances of its political rivals.[66] Working also through the Rangers, it put pressure on various politicians and party operatives to defect to the PTI. The military warned journalists and media outlets to cover the PTI, not the MQM.[67] A 2017 gerrymandering census, in which soldiers went door-to-door with census workers, undercounted the city’s population by between five and seven million. Ultimately, the PTI won 116 of the 272 votes in the National Assembly and, as the largest party, formed the government, with Imran Khan becoming prime minister. In Karachi, the PTI, assisted by the Rangers’ muscle, won 14 out of the city’s 21 National Assembly seats—a bruising defeat for the MQM.

 Four years later in 2022, the Pakistani military became frustrated with Imran Khan and helped to orchestrate a no-confidence vote that removed him from power, with various serious legal proceedings against Khan ensuing.

Anti-Crime Socio-Economic Measures

Unlike in various Latin American cities that have grappled with intense criminal violence, no specific anti-crime socio-economic policies accompanied the law enforcement measures. After his election, Imran Khan did promise a series of socio-economic policies to develop Karachi, his critical electoral base. In March 2019, he designated $1.15 billion for the city’s development, specifically ten public transportation projects and seven water delivery projects.[68] Immediately, however, questions arose as to how equitably the projects would be distributed, and whether their implementation would follow Karachi’s typical pattern of rewarding one’s constituents at the expense of ethnic and political rivals.

Meanwhile, Karachi’s MQM mayor, Waseen Akhtar, set out to change Karachi’s Economist ranking as the fourth least livable city in the world[69] by bulldozing Karachi’s informal Empress Market—with the justification that its informal stores and hawkers encroached on public and private property. Across Karachi, some 20 informal markets with over 11,000 shops and stalls were destroyed, affecting the livelihoods of tens of thousands in just two months, between November 2018 and January 2019.[70] Those measures were emblematic of the troubled approaches to socio-economic development in the megapolis. As long as Karachi remains “the drain of Pakistan, where all the poor and displaced wash up,” as a Pakistani security analyst put it,[71] anti-crime socio-economic measures will be drowned by the larger forces of Karachi’s inequality and discriminatory politics.

Did the Outcomes of the Anti-Crime Policies Hold?

Four years later, in 2023, the Sindh Rangers are still deployed to Karachi as the principal anti-crime security agency. Murders have remained at a fraction of their peak a decade earlier—393 in 2021[72] and 387 in 2022.[73] In the first two months of 2023, 29 people were murdered.[74]

In 2022, the Rangers claimed to have conducted 269 operations against terrorism, target killings, kidnapping, and extortion, arresting 65 high-value targets.[75] Many of the key criminal and terrorist groups that had been the key focus for the Rangers in 2013 were still so in 2022: Lyari gangs, MQM, and TTP.

The Rangers also expanded their role in anti-drug operations. But the counternarcotics actions have centered on seizures, rather than a systematical dismantling of drug trafficking networks. Even though Karachi’s drug networks are far less violent than drug trafficking groups in Latin America, they remain a source of homicides and violence. Moreover, the changes to the city’s drug markets—namely, the rise of methamphetamine consumption and trafficking in Karachi, part and parcel of the synthetic drugs revolution sweeping drug markets around the world – pose further risks of homicides spiking as the city’s lucrative drug market is being reshuffled. Significantly, in 2022, the amount of seized crystal methamphetamine (134 kilograms) just slightly surpassed that of heroin (129 kilograms).[76]

Furthermore, in a post-COVID pattern seen around the world, street crime shot up significantly in Karachi after 2020, giving rise to popular dissatisfaction and demands for police action. In 2022, the CPLC, still going strong, reported over 78,000 street crime incidents, noting that the actual number was likely higher, as Karachi residents remained reluctant to approach police and register complaints.[77] In the first 80 days of 2023, the number was 14,000.[78]

Yet once again, Karachi and Sindh authorities, caught up in inter-party rivalries, did not mount intense efforts to reform and strengthen Karachi’s struggling and troubled police. Even though the Sindh Safety and Police Complaints Commission, established in 2019 to improve police accountability and required by law to meet once a month under the chairmanship of the Sindh home minister, remained moribund,[79] the PPP ruling Sindh did not find any major issues with the police.[80] Instead of pushing for meaningful police reform, the PTI wanted to further expand the Sindh Rangers’ extensive powers.[81] Although new legal authorities were not granted, the paramilitary Rangers did enlarge their focus on street crime, including drug retail, extortion, and robberies. In 2022, they reported to have mounted 2,292 such operations.[82]

Karachi’s law enforcement agencies primarily embraced technological fixes, defining an increased use of CCTV cameras as key to controlling crime in the city.[83] But in September 2022, the police launched a special motorcycle branch—the Shaheen Force—to counter the many robberies and killings conducted from motorcycles.

TTP’s attacks in Karachi and elsewhere in Pakistan also went up significantly after 2020. Some of the increased activity preceded the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan in 2021.[84] But despite the Taliban’s repeated promises not to allow terrorist attacks out of Afghanistan’s territory,[85] TTP has been able to translate its safe havens in eastern Afghanistan into bases for mounting more attacks. Although Pakistan hoped the Taliban would simply shut down TTP, the Taliban, acting principally through the Haqqanis, have instead repeatedly chosen to attempt to broker ceasefires with TTP.[86] But they have not held, and because of its internal entanglements with and debts to the TTP and multiple high costs of fighting the TTP, the Afghan Taliban has not resorted to military action against the TTP despite pressure from Pakistan.[87] In Karachi, in addition to increasing terrorist attacks, including a daring hit against police headquarters in March 2023, the TTP also significantly increased its extortion rackets.[88]

Conclusions       

After 2013, law enforcement forces in Karachi were able to significantly suppress a major flareup of homicides and criminal violence, compounded by political violence, ethnic rivalries, and terrorism. Yet the law enforcement response that centered on paramilitary forces also became the source of violence and human rights violations. Moreover, this pattern of policing also blatantly interfered with and reorganized the political organization of the city—dismantling the existing dominant party and engineering the rise of another political party. While the city’s civil society mobilized in response to the violence, a deeper renegotiation of the flawed social contract remains elusive.

The law enforcement response also succeeded in Karachi only in the narrow sense: suppressing certain types of violence, such as importantly homicides, and terrorist attacks. But it did not fully manage to dismantle criminal networks or illicit economies. The extensive and long-term presence of the Rangers in Karachi and the impunity with which they operated allowed them to muscle in on the city’s illegal economies.

Indeed, while reshuffling the crime and violence market, the anti-crime policies in Karachi failed to include an effective and necessary police reform and address the underlying causes of violence, such as deficiencies and inequity in access to water, infrastructure, and other services. The lack of such services not only alienates local populations from the state, but also continually provides fertile ground for criminal groups to remain intertwined with the city’s bureaucracies and politics.

[1] “Urban Development,” The World Bank, https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/urbandevelopment/overview .

[2] See, for example, Vanda Felbab-Brown, “Bringing the State to the Slum: Confronting Organized Crime and Urban Violence in Latin America,” Brookings Latin America Initiative Paper Series , December 2011, https://www.brookings.edu/research/bringing-the-state-to-the-slum-confronting-organized-crime-and-urban-violence-in-latin-america/ ; and Antonio Sampaio, “Conflict Expansion to Cities.” Armed Conflict Survey . Vol. 5, no. 1, 2019: pp. 21–27.

[3] The first part of this article draws on Vanda Felbab-Brown, “Shoot First, Ask Later: Violence and Anti-crime Policies in Mexico’s Ciudad Juárez and Pakistan’s Karachi,” in Michael Glass, Taylor Seybolt, and Phil Williams, Eds., Urban Violence, Resilience and Security: Governance Responses in the Global South . Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2022: pp. 138–159.

[4] Citizen-Police Liaison Committee (CPLC), statistics on killings in Karachi, provided to author by the CPLC during her May 2016 fieldwork in Karachi and interviews with CPLC staff.

[5] See, for example, “Victor Mallet and Farhan Bokhari, “Karachi: Under Siege.” Financial Times. 26 June 2014, https://www.ft.com/content/e6042de2-fc46-11e3-98b8-00144feab7de .

[6] International Crisis Group (ICG), “Pakistan: Stoking the Fire in Karachi.” Asia Report No. 284 . 15 February 2017, https://icg-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/284-pakistan-stoking-the-fire-in-karachi.pdf : p. 2.

[8] Asian Development Bank, “Karachi Mega Cities Preparation Project: Final Report Volume 1,” August 2005, https://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/project-document/69115/38405-pak-dpta.pdf .

[9] Arif Hasan, “Land contestation in Karachi and the impact on housing and urban development.” International Institute for Environment and Development, April 2015, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4540218/pdf/10.1177_0956247814567263.pdf .

[10] See, for example, Vanda Felbab-Brown, “President Obama to Visit a Favela Where Surfacing on Sewage Used to Be a Pass Time.” The Brookings Institution . 17 March 2011, https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/president-obamas-visit-to-a-favela-in-rio-below-the-surface-calm/ ; and Vanda Felbab-Brown, “No Stairway to Heaven: Rescuing Slums in Latin America,” The Brookings Institution. 2 February 2012, https://www.brookings.edu/2012/02/02/no-stairway-to-heaven-rescuing-slums-in-latin-america/ .

[11] Mashail Malik and Niloufer Siddiqui, “Exposure to Violence and Voting in Karachi, Pakistan,” United States Institute of Peace (USIP). Special Report No. 450 . June 2019, https://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/2019-07/sr-450-exposure_to_violence_and_voting_in_karachi_pakistan.pdf

[12] See, for example, Laurent Gayer, “A Divided City: ‘Ethnic’ and ‘Religious Conflicts in Karachi, Pakistan,” Paris: Centre de Recherches Internationales, Sciences Po. May 2003, https://www.sciencespo.fr/ceri/en/content/divided-city-ethnic-and-religious-conflicts-karachi-pakistan

[13] Oskar Verkaaik, A People of Migrants: Ethnicity, State and Religion in Karach i . Amsterdam: VU University Press, 1994.

[14] See, for example, Noman Ahmed, “Micromanaging Karachi,” Dawn . 8 November 2016, https://www.dawn.com/news/1294851 .

[15] See, for example, Samina Ahmed, “Centralization, Authoritarianism, and the Mismanagement of Ethnic Relations in Pakistan,” in Michael E. Brown and Sumit Ganguly, Eds., Government Policies and Ethnic Relations in Asia and the Pacific . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997; and Oskar Verkaaik, Migrants and Militants: Fun and Urban Violence in Pakistan . Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004.

[16] ICG, “Policing Urban Violence in Pakistan.” Report 255 . 23 January 2014, https://www.crisisgroup.org/asia/south-asia/pakistan/policing-urban-violence-pakistan . Overall, the Pashtun represent about 15 percent of Pakistan’s 200 million people.

[17] Nichola Khan, Mohajir Militancy in Pakistan: Violence and Transformation in the Karachi Conflict . New York: Routledge, 2010.

[18] Op. Cit., “Pakistan: Stoking the Fire in Karachi” at Note 6: p. 5.

[19] For details on Pakistan’s poppy cultivation and counternarcotics measures, see Vanda Felbab-Brown; “Pakistan’s Relations with Afghanistan and Implications for Regional Politics.” National Bureau of Asian Research. 14  May 2015, https://www.brookings.edu/articles/pakistans-relations-with-afghanistan-and-implications-for-regional-politics/ ; and Vanda Felbab-Brown, “Pushing Up Poppies: Counternarcotics Measures in Afghanistan Affect Pakistan.” Newsweek Pakistan . 23 September 2010. For smuggling routes in Pakistan, see, Ikramul Haq, “Pak-Afghan Drug Trade in Historical Perspective.” Asian Survey . Vol. 36, no. 10: pp. 945–963, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2645627 .

[20] Nazia Hussain and Louise Shelley, “Karachi: Organized Crime in a Key Megacity.” Connections: The Quarterly Journal. Vol. 15, no. 3, 2016: pp. 5–15, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26326447

[21] Vanda Felbab-Brown, “Water Theft and Water Smuggling: A Growing Problem or Tempest in a Teapot?” The Brookings Institution . March 2017, https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/fp_201703_water_theft_smuggling.pdf .

[22] For which ethnic groups and political parties dominate particular subdivisions, see, for example, Imran Khan, “Karachi’s Crime Changing Face.” Dawn . 25 November 2018, https://www.dawn.com/news/1447410 .

[23] Op. Cit., Hasan at Note 9.

[24] Op. Cit., Gayer at Note 12.

[25]  ibid.

[26] For how criminal groups acquire political capital, see Vanda Felbab-Brown, Shooting Up: Counterinsurgency and the War on Drugs . Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 2010.

[27] Op. Cit., Gayer at Note 12.

[28] See Vanda Felbab-Brown, Harold Trinkunas, and Shadi Hamid, Militants, Criminals, and Warlords: The Challenge of Local Governance in an Age of Disorder . Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 2018.

[29] Matthieu Aikins, “Gangs of Karachi,” Harper’s Magazine , September 2015, https://harpers.org/archive/2015/09/gangs-of-karachi/.

[30] Fahad Desmukh, “You Are in Islamabad Because of Our Votes’: Interviews with the Lyari PAC.” Third Worldism: Dispatches from the Global South . 3 May 2012, https://thirdworldism.wordpress.com/2012/05/03/you-are-in-islamabad-because-of-our-votes-int/ .

[31] Author’s interviews with political party representatives and police officials, Karachi, May 2016. See also Dina Temple-Raston, “The Tony Soprano of Karachi: Gangster of Politician.” NPR . 2 January  2013, https://www.npr.org/2013/01/02/168197733/the-tony-soprano-of-karachi-gangster-or-politician.

[32] Vanda Felbab-Brown, "Why Pakistan Supports Terrorist Groups, and Why the US Finds it so Hard to Induce Change." The Brookings Institution. 5  January 2018, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-fromchaos/2018/01/05/why-pakistan-supports-terrorist-groups-and-why-the-us-finds-it-so-hard-toinducechange/ .

[33] ICG, “Pakistan: Karachi’s Madrasas and Violent Extremism.” Asia Report N°130.  29 March 2007, https://d2071andvip0wj.cloudfront.net/130-pakistan-karachi-s-madrasas-and-violent-extremism.pdf .

[34] Zia-ur-Rehman, “The Pakistani Taliban’s Karachi Network.” CTC Sentinel. Vol. 6, no. 5, May 2013: pp. 1–5, https://ctc.westpoint.edu/the-pakistani-talibans-karachi-network/ .

[35] Op. Cit., “Pakistan: Stoking the Fire in Karachi” at Note 6.

[36] Pak Institute of Peace Studies, “Elections 2013: Violence against Political Parties, Candidates, and Voters.” May 2013, cited at https://www.pakpips.com/web/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/225-1.pdf

[37] Author’s interviews with Karachi’s human rights activities, May 2016.

[38] Author’s interviews with former and current Pakistani police officials and security experts, Karachi and Islamabad, May 2016; and Nathan Hodge and Syed Shoaib Hasan, “Karachi Terror Crackdown Sparks Outcry.” Wall Street Journal. 9  March 2015, https://www.wsj.com/articles/karachi-terror-crackdown-sparks-outcry-1425919728 .

[39] Op. Cit, ICG, “Policing” at Note 16, p. 41.

[40] The Protection of Pakistan Act expired in 2016 and was not renewed.

[41] Author’s interviews with Pakistani civilian justice representatives, human rights activists, and active and retired military officials, Islamabad, Karachi, and Lahore, May 2016.

[42] Zia Ur-Rehman, “Sindh Rangers Work to Clean Up Violent Karachi.” Pakistan Forward. 6 September 2018, https://pakistan.asia-news.com/en_GB/articles/cnmi_pf/features/2018/09/06/feature-02 .

[44] Karachi police data cited in Meher Ahmad, “The Slain ‘Militant’ Was a Model, and Karachi Police Commander Is Out.” New York Times. 23 January 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/23/world/asia/karachi-police-rao-anwar-naqeebullah-mehsud.html?smid=tw-share .

[45] “Rangers detain ex-chief of fishermen cooperative for 90 days.” Dawn. 17 March 2016, https://www.dawn.com/news/1246197 .

[46] Op. Cit., “Pakistan: Stoking the Fire in Karachi” at Note 6, p. 14.

[48] Author’s interviews with human rights activists, Karachi, May 2016.

[49] Op. Cit., Zia Ur-Rehman at Note 42.

[50] “Karachi’s Ranking Improves Drastically on World Crime Index.” Geo Television News . 22 April 2019, https://www.geo.tv/latest/234985-karachis-ranking-improves-drastically-on-world-crime-index .

[51] “Karachi Operation Report: 2018 Records Higher Number of Rangers’ Operations.” The Express Tribune. 1 January 2019, https://tribune.com.pk/story/1878567/karachi-operation-report-2018-records-highest-number-rangers-operations .

[52] Op. Cit., “Pakistan: Stoking the Fire in Karachi” at Note 6, p. 18.

[54] Author’s interviews with Karachi’s water experts and human rights activities, Karachi, May 2016.

[55] See, for example, Vanda Felbab-Brown, “Calderon’s Caldron: Lessons from Mexico’s Battle Against Organized Crime and Drug Trafficking in Tijuana, Ciudad Juarez, and Michoacán.” Latin America Initiative Paper Series,   The Brookings Institution. September 2011, 09_calderon_felbab_brown.pdf (brookings.edu) ; and Vanda Felbab-Brown, “No Stairway to Heaven: Rescuing Slums in Latin America,” The Brookings Institution . 2 February 2, 2012, https://www.brookings.edu/2012/02/02/no-stairway-to-heaven-rescuing-slums-in-latin-america/ ; and Eduardo Moncada, Cities, Business, and the Politics of Urban Violence in Latin America . Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2016.

[56] Author’s interviews with members of CPLC staff and advisory board and Karachi police officials, Karachi, May 2016.

[57] Author’s interviews with security analysts and political party representatives, Karachi, May 2016.

[58] Author’s interviews with business community representatives and current and former Karachi police officials, Karachi and Islamabad, May 2016.

[59] Author’s interviews with CPLC staff and advisory board members, Karachi, 2016.

[62] Author’s interviews with members of Karachi’s business community, security analysts, and human rights activists, Karachi, and Islamabad, May 2016.

[63]  Op. Cit., Ahmad, at Note 44.

[64] “Rao Anwar Acquitted in Naqeebullah Murder Case.” The Express Tribune. 23 January 2023, https://tribune.com.pk/story/2397381/rao-anwar-acquitted-in-naqeebullah-murder-case .

[65] “Missing MQM workers are being found at PSP offices.” The News.  5 August 2016, https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/140142-Missing-MQM-workers-are-being-found-at-PSP-offices

[66] “Military Machinations, Violence and claims of election-rigging overshadow Pakistan’s election.” The Economist.  21 July 2018, https://www.economist.com/asia/2018/07/19/violence-and-claims-of-election-rigging-overshadow-pakistans-election .

[67] See, for example, “Foul Play, Time for Pakistan’s generals to stop meddling in politics.” The Economist . 21 July 2018, https://www.economist.com/leaders/2018/07/21/time-for-pakistans-generals-to-stop-meddling-in-politics

[68] Zia Ur-Rehman, “Karachi Shifts Focus to Development as Security Improves.” Pakistan Forward . 19 April 2019, https://pakistan.asia-news.com/en_GB/articles/cnmi_pf/features/2019/04/19/feature-01 .

[69] “The Global Livability Index 2018: A Free Overview.” The Economist . 2018, https://pages.eiu.com/rs/753-RIQ-438/images/The_Global_Liveability_Index_2018.pdf .

[70] Meher Ahmad, “Karachi Seeks to Remake Itself, with Bulldozers Leading the Way.” New York Times. 26 January 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/26/world/asia/karachi-construction-pakistan.html

[71] Author’s interviews with a Pakistani security analyst, Washington, DC, May 2018.

[72] Imtiaz Ali, “Situationer: Behind the Numbers of Karachi’s Crime Conundrum.” Dawn. 22 September 2022, https://www.dawn.com/news/1711286 .

[73] Salis Perwaiz, “Karachi Police Chief Admits Street Crime Increased by 7PC in 2022.” The News International.  1 January 2023, https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/1025894-karachi-police-chief-admits-street-crime-increased-by-7pc-in-2022 .

[74] Faraz Khan, “No Let-Up in Street Crime in City as 29 Killed, 140 Injured in 80 Days.” The News International. 23 March 2023, https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/1052903-no-let-up-in-street-crime-in-city-as-29-killed-140-injured-in-80-days .

[75] “Rangers Nab Most Wanted Criminals,” The Express Tribune . 1 January 2023, https://tribune.com.pk/story/2393635/rangers-nab-most-wanted-criminals .

[77] Zia Ur Rehman, “Empowering Rangers Alone Will Not Address Street Crime.” The News International . 8 February 2022, https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/931712-empowering-rangers-alone-will-not-address-street-crime .

[78] Op. Cit., Khan at Note 73.

[79] Razzak Abro, “Public Safety Commission Comatose for Two Years.” The Express Tribune. 16 May 2022, https://tribune.com.pk/story/2356822/public-safety-commission-comatose-for-two-years .

[80] Op Cit., Rehman at Note 76.

[82] Op. Cit., “Rangers Nab” at Note 74.

[83] Op. Cit., Ali at Note 71.

[84] Vanda Felbab-Brown, “Why the Taliban Won, and What Washington Can Do About it Now.”  Foreign Affairs . 17 August 2021, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2021-08-17/why-taliban-won?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=www-foreignaffairs-com.cdn.ampproject.org&utm_campaign=amp_kickers .

[85] Ayaz Gul, “Pakistan: Terrorists Enjoy ‘Safe Havens’ in Afghanistan.” Voice of America . 14 July 2023¸ https://www.voanews.com/a/pakistanterrorists-enjoy-safe-havens-in-afghanistan/7181276.html .

[86] Ayaz Gul, “Pakistan, Militants Pause Afghan-Hosted Peace Talks for Internal Discourse Amid Cautious Optimism.” Voice of America. 30 May 2022, https://www.voanews.com/a/pakistan-militants-pause-afghan-hosted-peace-talks-for-internal-discourse-amid-cautious-optimism-/6595633.htm l.

[87] Vanda Felbab-Brown, “What Ayman al-Zawahri’s Death Says about Terrorism in Taliban-Run Afghanistan.” The Brookings Institution . 2 August 2022, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2022/08/02/what-ayman-al-zawahris-death-says-about-terrorism-in-taliban-run-afghanistan/ .

[88] Naimat Khan, “Police Say Attack on Headquarters, Growing Extortion Meance Signal Return of Taliban to Karachi.” Arab News PK.  14 March 12023, https://www.arabnews.pk/node/ .

About the Author(s)

Dr. Vanda Felbab-Brown is Director of the Initiative on Nonstate Armed Actors and a Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy, Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology at the Brookings Institution. She is an expert on illicit economies and international and internal conflicts and their management, including counterinsurgency. She focuses particularly on South Asia, Burma, the Andean region, Mexico, and Somalia. Dr. Felbab-Brown is the author of Shooting Up: Counterinsurgency and the War on Drugs (Brookings Institution Press, 2009) which examines military conflict and illegal economies in Colombia, Peru, Afghanistan, Burma, Northern Ireland, India, and Turkey. She is also the author of numerous policy reports, academic articles, and opeds. A frequent commentator in US and international media, Dr. Felbab-Brown regularly testifies on these issues in the US Congress. She received her PhD in Political Science from MIT and her B.A. from Harvard University.

Home → Articles → Combatting Street Crimes in Pakistan

Written by Duaa Ayaz • February 11, 2023 • 2:59 pm • Articles , Pakistan , Published Content

Combatting Street Crimes in Pakistan

Ms Duaa Ayaz is a graduate of Economics and Social Sciences. She is currently working as a freelance writer on Fiverr. Her sphere of interest includes international relations, geopolitics, foreign policy, security, and socio-economic issues of Pakistan and the world.

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A Bleak Picture

The Karachi police reported 60,580 incidents of street crime including 20,406 episodes of mobile snatching in the first 9 months of 2022 alone. Additionally, the Lahore Police data shows a 282% increase in gang robberies. With a crime index of 42.51 , Pakistan’s jeopardized internal security is not only deleterious to the common man but the business communities too.

While crime statistics may fluctuate with time, the underlying cause of the conundrum persists. It is therefore pertinent to analyse the fundamental causes of escalating street crime through the lens of various criminological perspectives while also exploring the problems of law enforcement agencies so as to formulate viable solutions and policy options to overhaul the damaged criminal justice system of Pakistan.

Criminological Theories

Street crime is defined as criminal behaviour that occurs in public spaces and is often motivated by financial gains. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) , street crime encompasses a wide range of criminal activities including violent crimes such as homicide, assault, robbery, harassment, and arson. It also includes property crimes such as larceny, arson, breaking and entering, burglary, and motor vehicle theft.

In Pakistan, street crime affects urban and rural areas alike; however, lately, street crimes have become particularly prevalent in large urban cities such as Karachi, Lahore, and Islamabad. Street crime is a symptom of a deeper malaise in our society, stemming from issues of inequality, poverty, and unemployment.

Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) (2022) and Asian Development Bank(ADB) report estimates that 21.9% of Pakistan’s population lives below the national poverty line. Although a broad range of intrinsic and extrinsic factors are responsible for the recent spike in street crime, however, extrinsic factors play a major role in case of Pakistan.

Rational Choice Theory

The rational choice theory is a viewpoint of the right realist school that attempts to explain crime by virtue of the hedonistic nature of man, that is, individuals engage in criminal behaviour out of free will because they believe it will lead to personal gain, and they weigh the potential risks and rewards.

In Pakistan, street crime is usually committed by individuals because they believe the potential rewards outweigh the risks as the criminals won’t be held accountable due to the negligence of law enforcement agencies. The lack of FIRs lodged against the perpetrators has also aided criminals. Moreover, street crime has become a rather profitable business in Pakistan due to the low rate of conviction. 

Strain theory

Robert K Merton’s strain theory is a social structure theory that states that crime is a result of the strain or stress caused by the gap between culturally defined goals and the means to achieve them. In Pakistan, the gap between the cultural emphasis on success and the limited opportunities for social mobility may lead to strain and frustration which can manifest in criminal behaviour.

Economic crises and inflation have resulted in rising poverty in Pakistan. As a result, people resort to the path of street crime as a means to earn a living. Undoubtedly, poverty and inflation have exacerbated street crimes in Pakistan. This can be substantiated by the UNODC report ‘Impact of Economic Crises on Crime’ which states that “during periods of economic stress, the incidence of robbery may double, and homicide and motor vehicle theft also increase “.

Anomie and Deviance Theory

Anomie (normlessness) is a sociological theory propounded by Emilè Durkheim. However, Robert K Merton used the anomie theory to explain how crime and deviance arise from a lack of social regulation or norms thereby leaving individuals to pursue their self-interest without any guidance or constraints. Generally, societal changes, such as rapid industrialization and urbanization play a crucial role in the creation of anomie. However, in Pakistan, prolonged political instability and corruption have resulted in lawlessness and normlessness in society.

With an increase in rural-urban migration in recent years, the traditional norms and values have become blurred creating a sense of alienation, which culminates in criminality. For instance, migrant young adults living in high levels of poverty, unemployment, and social dislocation may experience anomie, compelling them to commit street crimes. This can be illustrated by a spike in juvenile street crimes and delinquent teenagers. Retired SSP Punjab Police Rana Shahid noted that young boys think street crime is the easy way out of poverty.

Delinquent Subculture Theory

Albert Cohen’s subculture theory states that crime is a result of the values and norms of a subculture that deviate from those of mainstream society. In Pakistan, street crimes may be committed by individuals who are part of subcultures that have a different set of values and norms than mainstream society such as street gangs or organized criminal groups. They may engage in street crime as a means of gaining status and respect within their subculture. A recent influx of refugees and immigrants in the urban areas of Pakistan has also germinated street gangs and dacoits.

Social Disorganization theory

Clifford Shaw and Henry McKay’s social disorganization theory emphasizes the role of community factors in crime. In Pakistan, street crimes may be more prevalent in areas with high levels of social disorganization such as neighbourhoods with deep-seated poverty and low socio-economic status of the population in addition to ethnic heterogeneity and greater population density. The lack of social cohesion and informal social control mechanisms in the above areas can make it easier for street crimes to occur.

Bond Theory

A sub-theory of the social control theory, Travis Hirschi’s bond theory analyses criminal behaviour as a result of an individual’s severed bonds with society. In a highly stratified society like Pakistan, scarce avenues of socialisation due to income inequality and no access to education result in detachment from society or any form of social control, resulting in criminality.

A Lacking Criminal Justice System

Law enforcement agencies are the pillars of society that enforce social control so as to regulate and maintain social order. However, unfortunately, law enforcement agencies have become mediocre in Pakistan and are ineffective in controlling street crime. Additionally, a snail-paced criminal justice system replete with corruption and political interference also impedes the process of conviction of criminals

Pendency of Criminal Cases

Pakistan’s criminal justice system is besieged with the challenge of huge pendency of criminal cases and inordinate delay in their disposal. Delayed criminal investigation and inadequate prosecution are primary factors responsible for the low rate of conviction. The dent in the criminal justice system acts as a shield to the perpetrators who engage in street crime audaciously.

Corruption within law enforcement agencies is a major problem in Pakistan. This can include bribery, extortion, and abuse of power, which can make it difficult for law enforcement agencies to effectively control street crime.

Lack of Resources and Training

Law enforcement agencies in Pakistan often lack the necessary resources such as funding, equipment, and personnel to effectively combat street crime. This can make it difficult for them to effectively patrol high-crime areas and respond to criminal incidents. Many law enforcement officers in Pakistan lack proper training in tackling street crime. This can lead to a lack of knowledge and expertise, which can make it difficult for law enforcement agencies to effectively combat street crime.

Limited Collaboration

Law enforcement agencies in Pakistan often lack collaboration and coordination between different agencies and departments. This can make it difficult for them to share information and resources, impeding their ability to control street crime. Law enforcement agencies also often have poor relationships with the communities they serve which can make it difficult for them to gain the trust and cooperation of community members.

Political interference

Law enforcement agencies in Pakistan are often subject to political interference, which can make it difficult for them to carry out their duties independently. This can include pressure to overlook or downplay certain crimes, or to prioritize certain cases over others.

Inadequate Laws

The legal system in Pakistan is often not equipped to deal with street crimes, the laws are not strict enough to deter criminals and the punishments are not severe enough to act as a deterrent. It’s important for law enforcement agencies to address these issues in order to improve their effectiveness in controlling street crime.

Solutions to Street Crimes in Pakistan

Street crime requires a multifaceted approach that addresses the underlying social and economic conditions that contribute to the problem. It isn’t merely a law enforcement problem, it is a social problem that requires a community-wide response.

Addressing the Root Causes

To effectively control street crimes in Pakistan, it is important to address the root causes such as poverty, unemployment, lack of education, and social inequality. This can be done through targeted social and economic policies like poverty reduction programs, job creation initiatives, and programs to improve access to education and training and provide social safety nets for the most vulnerable.

Furthermore, through social programs like Ehsaas and BISP, financial assistance and subsidies can be provided to poor and low-income families to improve their living conditions and reduce the likelihood of them being involved in street crimes.

Improving Law Enforcement Agencies

Street crimes in Pakistan are often exacerbated by a lack of effective law enforcement. Hence, it is essential to enhance the capacity and effectiveness of law enforcement agencies. This can be done by providing training, resources, and equipment to law enforcement agencies, as well as implementing measures to combat corruption within these agencies.

Public-Private Partnerships

Public-private partnerships in policing are a collaboration between private security companies and police. Such partnerships facilitate policing as the private security companies would help bridge the gap between the act of crime and the action taken by police agencies.

These collaborations with the private sector and non-governmental organizations can also help law enforcement agencies with budget deficits by amassing funds for the policing sector. Moreover, these organizations can assist in developing and implementing crime-prevention strategies. NGOs can also provide support such as counseling and financial assistance to the victims of street crime.

Community Policing

Community policing is a strategy cum philosophy that involves the active participation of community members in preventing and combating crime. Community policing can be done by forming neighbourhood watch groups, organizing community meetings, and involving community members in the design and implementation of crime-prevention strategies.

In the past, various attempts have been made in Pakistan to implement community policing. For instance, Islamabad Capital Police organised a system of ‘police volunteers’ to ensure effective community policing in controlling street crime.

Surveillance and Technology

Incorporating modern technology such as surveillance cameras is pivotal to ensuring proactive policing in curbing street crimes. Police can use cameras to monitor high-crime areas and quickly respond to crimes in progress. The use of CCTV cameras, license plate recognition cameras, and facial recognition technology can be used to identify suspects, track their movements, and solve crimes.

Additionally, technology such as GPS tracking can be used to monitor the movements of police patrols and ensure that they are properly covering high-crime areas. The recent spike in street crime, including the murder of a highly educated HR manager during a robbery in Gulistan-e-Johar, prompted the implementation of the ‘ Sindh Security of Vulnerable ’ act by virtue of which, the Karachi police sent notices to shop owners to install CCTV cameras.

Increasing Penalties

The right realist school emphasizes zero-tolerance policing to control crimes. Moreover, Italian criminologist Cesare Beccaria, an advocate of punitive justice, argued that the punishment of crimes must be proportionate to the crimes committed so as to deter criminals from committing them. In Pakistan, the menace of street crimes can be largely controlled by increasing penalties for street crimes as they can act as a deterrent to potential offenders.

Rehabilitation Programs

Street crime is often committed by individuals with a history of criminal behaviour. To control street crime, it is essential to provide rehabilitation programs that address the underlying issues that lead to criminal behaviour. A part of restorative justice advocated by the left realist school, rehabilitation programs in Pakistan could help restore offenders as assets to society thus mitigating the problem of street crime by repeated offenders.

Street crime is not just a problem of the streets, it is a problem of the entire society. It is a blight that eats away at the fabric of our society. Street crime not only affects the safety and security of citizens but also has a negative impact on the economy, as it can deter investment and tourism. Therefore, it is essential to combat street crime in Pakistan through a multipronged approach that addresses both the underlying causes of street crime and the problems of the criminal justice system.

If you want to submit your articles and/or research papers, please check the  Submissions  page.

The views and opinions expressed in this article/paper are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Paradigm Shift .

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The Criminal Justice System Of Pakistan

"in a country like pakistan, knowledge is seldom celebrated. it is more so in different fields of study that affect the lives of public at large. the extant material focuses on reform or improvements without stating clearly what the system is and how it operates. the knowledge gap qua justice sector is acute. a point of departure can be a brief elucidation of the criminal justice system, which this overview will try to provide in topical manner." - kamran adil.

In a country like Pakistan, knowledge is seldom celebrated. It is more so in different fields of study that affect the lives of public at large. The extant material focuses on reform or improvements without stating clearly what the system is and how it operates. The knowledge gap qua justice sector is acute. A point of departure can be a brief elucidation of the criminal justice system, which this overview will try to provide in topical manner.

Constitution of Pakistan and Judicature

The constitution of a country constitutes its basic organs i.e. the legislature, executive and judicature. The 1973 Constitution of Pakistan, like its predecessor constitutional instruments, provides for the three organs. As Pakistan is a Federation, its constitution provides for executive, legislature and judicature [1] at both federal and provincial levels. It must be noted that the concept of judicature is often confused with the term judiciary; while judicature means the administration of justice, the judiciary is the system of courts in a country [2] .

Judicature and the Criminal Justice System

The Constitution of Pakistan provides for the separation of judiciary from the executive, [3] and this constitutional dictate has yet to witness fruition. The traditionally strong executive has remained central to power and has kept the legislature and the judicature peripheral by controlling the purse. Since 2007, the judiciary has gained some space by using its suo motu powers [4] to enforce Fundamental Rights coupled with its power to punish contempt or non-observance of its orders [5] ; the legislature has not been able to assert its power through its conventions, privileges and rules, and due to its partisan nature. The Constitution establishes constitutional courts including the Supreme Court, High Courts, Federal Shariat Court, and provides for jurisdictions of different courts relating to constitutional, civil, criminal and service matters. The cumulative reading of the competence of federal and provincial legislatures, the jurisdictions of constitutional courts, and the fundamental rights [6] provides for the constitutional basis of the criminal justice system in Pakistan.

Role of Federal and Provincial Governments and Criminal Justice System

Under the Constitution, law and order is the responsibility of the provinces that discharge it through their provincial governments. In the provinces, the criminal justice system is managed through the Home and Prosecution Departments. The responsibility of the federation is concurrent to the provinces [7] and extends to federally administered territories of the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT), the Gilgit Baltistan (GB), and the Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK). The federal government is also responsible for dealing with inter-provincial coordination in criminal matters that it carries out through the Ministry of Interior (MoI). In addition, the federal government has power over the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), which functions as a federal police that investigates and prosecutes organized crimes of illegal immigration, human trafficking, cybercrime etc. The federal and provincial governments use their respective rules of business to exercise superintendence of the criminal justice system; this use of delegated legislation to counterweight the primary legislation is an important mechanism that must be researched thoroughly to bring about any reform in the system of governance of the criminal justice system.

Criminal Justice System

Ontologically, the study of crimes is styled as Criminology and the study of the agencies that control or respond to crime is called Criminal Justice (CJ) [8] . The US has a rich tradition in the production of Criminal Justice knowledge, and offers distinct degree programmes. Based on the US pedagogical practice, the criminal justice system of Pakistan may be divided into five components: (i) Police, (ii) Prosecution, (iii) Courts; (iv) Prisons, and (v) Corrections. Each component has its own functions, organization, budget, working and legal framework. In practice, a typical provincial criminal justice system is managed by the Home Department under which the police and prisons work as its attached departments. A brief introduction to each component has been discussed below.

According to the Oxford Handbook on Criminology, the police is an organization, whereas policing is the function of preventing and detecting crime. In Pakistan, insofar as the organizational aspect is concerned, each province has its own police organization, like the Punjab Police, Sindh Police, KP Police and Baluchistan Police. The total number of police personnel in Pakistan is about half a million. Each province has its own organizational law. The Police Order, 2002 is the organizational law of the Punjab Police; the KP Police Act, 2017 is the organizational law of the KP Police; the Sindh Police works under the Sindh (Repeal of the Police Act, 1861 and the Revival of the Police Order, 2002) (Amendment) Act, 2019, and the Baluchistan Police employs the Baluchistan Police Act, 2011. The powers of policing are provided by the Code of Criminal Procedure 1898, and all police organizations derive their police powers from it. The legal framework of policing primarily supports the detection model of policing by providing the legal basis of investigation and subsequent processes; it provides very limited powers of preventing crime to the police organizations.

Prosecution:

The function of the prosecution is to evaluate the evidence collected by the police, and to filter the quality and quantity of cases to be sent up for trial. Historically, it was part of police organizations. Following the example of the UK where the UK Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) was founded in 1986, the prosecution was separated for the first time from police organizations in 1986, but the arrangement was reversed in 1991. Thereafter, since 2003, separate prosecution departments/attached departments have been established in all the provinces of Pakistan. The organization and functions of prosecution departments are governed by separate provincial laws. Punjab Prosecution Department was established in 2006 under the Punjab Criminal Prosecution Service (Constitution, Functions and Powers) Act, 2006; the Sindh Prosecution Service works as an attached department of the Sindh Law Department and its working law is the Sindh Criminal Prosecution Service (Constitution, Functions and Powers) Act, 2010. Likewise, with some variations, the KP Prosecution Service (Constitution, Functions and Powers) Act, 2005 and the Baluchistan Prosecution Service (Constitution, Functions and Powers) Act, 2003 establish prosecution organizations in KP and Baluchistan.

The courts that deal with criminal matters are magistrate and sessions courts. Contrary to the constitutional courts that are established under the constitution and have a binding effect on the executive, the magistrate and sessions courts are products of the Code of Criminal Procedure 1898, and essentially decide facts. The magistrates have charge of different police stations and their working is as important as of police stations. Owing to their significance, the Chief Justice of Pakistan, Mr. Asif Saeed Khosa, termed the police and courts ‘conjoined twins’. The courts adjudicate upon criminal matters by conducting trials in accordance with the law. The courts of magistrates and additional sessions are present at the level of tehsil/taluka in every district of the country. All the accused individuals have to be produced before them within twenty-four hours in accordance with the Constitution (Article 10). The courts follow an adversarial system of adjudication. Criminal cases are required to be proved beyond reasonable doubt, and the accused is treated as innocent unless proven guilty.

Prisons and Corrections:

Prisons work as an attached department to the Home Departments of the provinces. Maintaining an incarceration-based prison system is a very expensive project for any economy. All over the world, the trend is to minimize the burden on prisons. In Pakistan, conceptually, every district should have a district prison and for every division, there should be a central prison; however, in practice, the district and central jails have not been provided to all districts and divisions of the country. The legal framework of prisons is very old in the entire country; prisons in all the provinces are constituted and function under the Prisons Act, 1894, except Sindh, where the Sindh Prisons and Corrections Services Act, 2019 has been enacted recently. The prison departments in Pakistan also contain corrections facilities that are aimed at providing skills to the prisoners so that they can rehabilitate themselves in society upon their return. Unfortunately, due to a lack of investment in corrections, the results of the corrections system are limited and their facilities are virtually merged into prisons establishments. The regime of parole and probation that work as alternatives to imprisonment were introduced in 1927 through the Directorates of Parole and Probation under Home Department. After independence, such directorates were introduced in all provinces within the Home Departments. For the sake of knowledge and in the context of Pakistan, the definitions of three key terms related to rehabilitation and reintegration must be noted:

• Corrections: “…services and programs aimed at correcting the criminal conduct of the Prisoners in order to rehabilitate and integrate them in the society” [9] ;
• Probation : The term probation is based on two laws titled as the Good Conduct Probationer’s Release Act, 1926 and the Probation of Offenders Ordinance, 1960. The concept of probation is that first time offenders may be released by the court on surety. Probation may be applied as an alternate to imprisonment.
• Parole : The term parole is not defined in the law. The Good Conduct Probationer’s Release Rules, 1927 refer to Parole Officers who supervise the prisoners on ‘parole’. The concept is that the provincial governments may suspend the sentence of a prisoner and release him under a licence owing to his good behavior.

[1] Part VII of the Constitution of Pakistan, 1973.

[2] Francis Bacon’s Essay on Judicature is interesting and the difference can be inferred by looking at different law dictionaries. A good detail is available in Britannica Encyclopedia online at https://www.britannica.com/topic/administrative-law/Judicial-review-of-administration#ref417468

[3] Article 175 of the Constitution of Pakistan, 1973.

[4] Article 184(3) of the Constitution of Pakistan, 1973.

[5] Article 204 of the Constitution of Pakistan, 1973.

[6] Especially, Articles 8, 9, 10, 10-A, 11, 12 and 13 of the Constitution of Pakistan, 1973.

[7] Articles 142 and 143 of the Constitution of Pakistan, 1973.

[8] Siegel, Larry J, Criminology-Theories, Patterns and Typologies, 9 th Edition, page 4.

[9] Section 4(l) of the Sindh Prisons and Corrections Services Act, 2019.

By Kamran Adil

Author:  Kamran Adil

Mr. Kamran Adil is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Research Society of International Law. He is currently serving as Deputy Inspector General (Operations) Punjab Police.

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The WJP is an independent, multidisciplinary organization working to advance the rule of law worldwide.

We engage advocates from across the globe and from multiple work disciplines to advance the rule of law.

The Rule of Law in Pakistan

The rule of law in pakistan  represents the voices of over 4,000 people in pakistan and their experiences with the rule of law in their country. view the report., the rule of law in pakistan: key findings from the 2017 extended general population poll & justice sector survey presents select findings from two world justice project surveys conducted in five urban areas in pakistan between august and december 2017..

The General Population Poll was conducted through face-to-face interviews in 2,010 households distributed proportionally across the five urban areas of Faisalabad, Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar, and Quetta. This poll was designed for the WJP Rule of Law Index ® to capture data on the experiences and perceptions of ordinary citizens on various themes related to government accountability, bribery and corruption, crime, and access to justice.

In order to explore justice issues in greater depth, the WJP also conducted a separate Justice Sector Survey of 2,010 households using the same methodology. This survey compiles respondents' views and experiences related to dispute resolution, legal awareness, legal identity, household dynamics, and gender issues.

Whereas the WJP’s flagship Rule of Law Index ® offers aggregate rule of law scores, this report presents disaggregated question-level data as 12 thematic briefs to highlight different facets of the rule of law as it is experienced by the population in Pakistan. These briefs touch upon issues of accountability, corruption, fundamental freedoms, criminal justice, and civil justice, as well as views on women, internally displaced people, and refugees. Together, these briefs give an overview of rule of law and the justice system in Pakistan and can be used to better understand the state of the country as it is manifested in the day-to-day lives of its citizens.

  Key Findings

• Perceptions of Government Accountability: There is a high perception of impunity in Pakistan, though perceptions of government accountability vary across cities. Respondents in Lahore are the most optimistic concerning government accountability while respondents in Quetta are the most pessimistic.
• Corruption Across Institutions: Pakistanis believe that a significant number of authorities are involved in corrupt practices. Police are viewed as the most corrupt authorities by respondents while judges and magistrates are seen as the least corrupt.
• Bribery Victimization: Petty bribery is pervasive in Pakistan. More than half of Pakistanis have paid a bribe to receive assistance from the police and a quarter have paid a bribe to process a government permit. Since 2013, there has been an overall decrease in bribes paid to a police officer, to process a government permit, and to receive medical attention at a public hospital.
• Fundamental Freedoms: Pakistanis have moderate views of political and media freedoms in the country, and quite positive views of religious freedoms. Since 2016, perceptions of political, media, and religious freedoms in the country have improved.
• Crime Victimization: Crime rates in Pakistan vary by type of crime and city. Rates of armed robbery are the highest in Karachi, burglary rates are the highest in Peshawar, and murder rates vary between 1% and 3% across all five cities. On average, there has been a decrease in the rates of all three crimes since 2016.
• Criminal Justice: Incompetence of criminal investigators was cited as the most serious problem facing criminal investigative services in Pakistan, while inadequate resources were cited as their most serious problem facing criminal courts. Perceptions of police corruption and respect for suspects’ rights have improved in recent years.
• Access to Civil Justice: A large majority of those surveyed (82%) experienced a legal problem in the last two years, with problems relating to community and natural resources, consumer disputes, and public services being the most common. Of those, only 14% turned to an authority or third party to adjudicate, mediate, or help resolve the problem. Nearly half reported experiencing a hardship as a result of their legal problem, with stress related illnesses being the most common hardship reported.
• Legal Awareness: Pakistanis have a moderate amount of legal knowledge. The greatest percentage of respondents was able to correctly answer questions related to children’s legal rights.
• Women in Pakistani Society: There are minor differences in men and women’s views regarding the rights of women when it comes to divorce and dispute resolution, but the perception gap grows for questions related to inheritance and household dynamics.
• Internally Displaced People : Views on internally displaced people (IDPs) in Pakistan vary by topic and by city. On average, only half of Pakistanis believe that IDPs are welcome in their community but more than two thirds believe that the government is doing enough to help IDPs. These perceptions are the most positive in Faisalabad and the most negative in Quetta.
• Refugees in Pakistan : Views on refugees in Pakistan also vary by topic and by city. Half of respondents believe that refugees should be guaranteed the same constitutional rights as citizens of Pakistan. When asked about the seriousness of various problems relating to refugees, the largest percentage of respondents said that refugees bringing violence and extremism to Pakistan was a serious problem. Less than half of respondents believe that refugees and citizens are treated equally by the police.
• Trust in Pakistan : Pakistanis have a high degree of trust in fellow citizens. Across institutions, Pakistanis have the most trust in the courts and the least trust in the police, though trust in the police has steadily risen over the last four years.

The Rule of Law in Pakistan 2017 Report

• Download (English)

Introduction & Executive Findings

Thematic Infographics

Project Design & Survey Methodology

Previous Edition: Rule of Law in Pakistan 2016

General population poll (gpp) 2017-2018, world justice project pakistan justice sector survey 2016.

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Aims and Scope

The Pakistan Journal of Criminology  is an official publication of the Pakistan Society of Criminology. It aims to advance the study of criminology and criminal justice; to promote empirically-based public policy in crime management; and to encourage comparative studies of crime and criminal justice in Pakistan for having implications for Pakistan. It further aims to develop and establish an indigenous criminological scholarship on issues pertaining to Pakistan. It publishes high quality original research and articles using varied approaches, including discussion of theory. analysis of quantitative data, comparative studies, systematic evaluation of interventions, and study of institutions and political process. It will also be acknowledged as a leading academic journal specializing in the study of policing institutions and their practices, in addition to its use of evidence generated by sound social science methods to evaluate criminological ideas and policy. The journal will bring into light the gap between practic and theory through strengthening the role of indigenous research in the development of relationship between criminal justice policy and practice. Such evidence-sed research will focus on any aspect of crime and the justice system and can feature local, provincial, national or international concerns vis-a-vis Pakistan. Both quantitative and qualitative studies are encouraged. The journal encourages the submission of articles, research notes, commentaries and comprehensive essays that focus on crime and broadly defined justice-related topics in Pakistani context. The journal is an interdisciplinary and an innovative idea in Pakistan. The journal is issued quarterly.

Current Issue: Volume 8, Issue (2016)

Criminal law                             .

PDF   Pakistan Journal of Criminology, Volume 9, Number 3, July 2017

PDF   Pakistan Journal of Criminology, Volume 9, Number 2, April 2017

PDF  Pakistan Journal of Criminology, Volume 8, Number 3, July 2016

PDF   Pakistan Journal of Criminology, Volume 7, Number 4, October 2016

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street crimes in pakistan

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BA English Essay: How to reduce crime in Pakistan?

How to reduce crime in Pakistan?

The crimes can be categorized in two types one is the physical crimes and others is the white collar crimes. Both are considered as the deviant behavior and are discouraged in a society. In the recent years the crime rate has been exceedingly high due to the economic crisis, neglect of authorities and dwindling morality in the members of society.

To start with, there is a famous saying that a hungry man is an angry man. Poverty is the root cause of many physical crimes. To reduce poverty we have to encourage the even distribution of wealth in all strata of society. Technical education must be mandatory along with academic education so that people can use their skills to earn money. The other crimes are majorly related to intolerance and frustration. The government should provide more recreational facilities and entertainment opportunities to the residents. The youth must be indulged in physical activities like sports and gym to enjoy physical health as well as sound mental health.

The white collar crimes are mostly related to declining morality in the people. The bribery is common in all layers of authorities,]. It reaches from the clerks to the highest in power. People have lost the blessings of contended mind and the growing materialism is responsible for show off and shortcuts to get rich. We should follow the Islamic teachings of contended lifestyle and should adopt a simple way of living.

In a nut shell, the crime rates have increased because of our neglect to this piercing issue. With right steps taken at the right time we will be able to counter this issue and reduce the crime rates.

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Vague Visages

Movies, tv & music • authentic indie film criticism • forming the future • est. 2014 • rt-approved 🍅, crime scene #19: ‘only the river flows’ – a detective goes around the bend.

Crime Scene is a monthly Vague Visages column about the relationship between crime cinema and movie locations. VV’s Only the River Flows  essay contains spoilers. Wei Shujun’s 2023 film features Yilong Zhu, Chloe Maayan and Tianlai Hou. Check out film essays, along with cast/character summaries , streaming guides and complete soundtrack song listings , at the home page.

In the first scene of Only the River Flows , a group of kids in cop uniforms play in an abandoned government building. As they run around, one of them opens a door which leads to a sheer drop into the rubble below: a section of the building has already been torn down, and the boy stands there staring at the abyss, with diggers below. Wei Shujun’s 2023 film follows detective Ma Zhe (Zhu Yilong) as he works a puzzling series of murders in rural China. The aforementioned child playing dress-up staring at empty space is an apt opening image for an ambiguous, shadow-drenched noir.

Another such startling image emerges early in the plot: the local movie theater has closed down, and the chief of police (Hou Tianlai) orders Ma to conduct his investigation from the empty auditorium. As cause-and-effect in the case spin out of control, so too does Ma’s grip on reality, with the movie theater functioning as the nexus of his nightmarish dreaming. The first murder involves that of an elderly lady found by the river bank, with suspicion quickly falling on her adopted son, labeled by authorities as “the madman” (Kang Chunlei). As more bodies appear, the police chief urges Ma to close the case, but the detective never seems fully convinced by the facts. As the protagonist loses himself in the details, he dredges up memories and pieces them together in incoherent ways, trying to find one narrative that fits. Nothing ever quite coheres — details forever washed away by the rain.

Only the River Flows Essay: Related — Know the Cast: ‘A Murder at the End of the World’

Only the River Flows is deliberately muddy, probably to the point of frustration for some viewers, but this total ambiguity is a boon. I first watched the film last year at a festival; during a recent rewatch, I became convinced that the movie has since been recut or even censored. The Chinese government requires pre-approved permits of all national films before they are screened publicly (even if said film is screening at international festivals), and it’s not uncommon that previously-approved productions have to come back for extra cuts. It would not be beyond possibility that such a film was struck by the censors.  

Only the River Flows Essay: Related — Soundtracks of Cinema: ‘Monkey Man’

But alas, my own memories are unreliable. I conflated a key plot point with Bong Joon-ho’s Memories of Murder , which I had re-watched not long after Only the River Flows (also for this column, incidentally). The similarities between the two films are many: aside from cases that drive the respective detectives crazy, both productions take place in the recent past in rainy areas of the rural Far East. Music provides a key clue in both procedurals, a developmentally-challenged local becomes a key suspect, local bureaucratic incompetency hampers both investigations… the list goes on. No wonder I transplanted memories of one film onto another and told myself my own story. It’s appropriate to Only the River Flows , which is about how narratives converge and muddle; when they don’t fit, they drive us crazy.

Only the River Flows Essay: Related — Know the Cast: ‘Longlegs’

These similarities go beyond just the obvious but are integral to the postmodern positioning of Only the River Flows . The film is, however, not a postmodernist work of winking irony and remixing, but a postmodernist production of sincerity and contemporaneity, one which looks to the past as a way of trying to understand the present.

Only the River Flows Essay: Related — Soundtracks of Cinema: ‘The Killer’

To that end, Only the River Flows and the investigation it centers on is drenched in analogue effects and ephemera. The movie was captured on 16mm by cinematographer Chengma Zhiyuan, apparently the first mainland Chinese film in years to be shot on film , and it looks astounding. The grain adds to the rainy, foggy feel of the central location, with a hazy and evocative use of color and gorgeous shadowing derived from a seemingly never-ending supply of low-hanging light fixtures and cigarettes. Few modern films have looked this beautiful and completely noir . In the plot itself, physical objects prove more useful to the investigation than the standard methods of police procedurals like interrogations and fingerprints. A cassette tape, a makeup bag, the amount of bullets left in a pistol magazine — these objects are crucial: they can be touched and felt. Ma intimately cradles each one at various points.

Only the River Flows Essay: Related — Know the Cast: ‘Le Samouraï’

And yet, the physicality of these objects, and their reality, never amounts to anything concrete as far as the murder investigation goes. They are, in the end, only objects, given meaning by the circumstantial context around them. The meaning of the cassette tape is based on its contents. The meaning of the makeup is based on the owner. The meaning of the gun is based on who fired it. One of the challenges the director faces is to ask what happens to the noir mystery once these links are severed. The answer is perhaps pure memory, pure conjecture, pure guesswork.

Only the River Flows Essay: Related — Soundtracks of Cinema: ‘Love Lies Bleeding’

Amidst all that is the presence of Only the River Flows’ central location — a nondescript, post-industrial town somewhere in rural China. The river is the region’s landmark, the site of the film’s murders. Is its presence there to wash away the sins? Only the River Flows hints at bureaucratic incompetency — again, my memory of my initial watch included more scenes about poor governance. Have I misremembered again? Ma’s boss is focused more on personal glory, judged by how many crimes his division solves, regardless of whether they solve them correctly, as well as his own table tennis prowess in the local leagues. “Stick to the facts!” the police chief says in a key scene as he admonishes Ma for a report where the detective points out that all he’s done is lay out the evidence as he sees it. In Only the River Flows , facts and evidence become fractured, washed away by the rain and a river.

Only the River Flows Essay: Related — Know the Cast: ‘True Detective’

Over and over again, Only the River Flows returns to the idea of the fallibility of truth, the fragmentary nature of evidence and our own ability to warp our own memories to suit our own narrative. Linked to incompetent state officials in an otherwise controlling, authoritarian state, the film transforms into a drama about who owns what stories, and from which grounds they do so. The tipping point for Ma’s state of mind emerges around the movie’s mid-point, as he falls asleep in an empty cinema (like so many of us) and dreams an entirely different conclusion to the case, driven by a projector that burns up. Like many great crime films, Only the River Flows makes full use of its setting, delivering a grimy and ugly story that suits its grimy and ugly central location. But it finds something else in the mud by the riverbanks too — a realization that these narratives of murder and misery very rarely lead anywhere for their protagonists, who become caught in fictions of both their and our making.

Fedor Tot ( @redrightman ) is a Yugoslav-born, Wales-raised freelance film critic and editor, specializing in the cinema of the ex-Yugoslav region. Beyond that, he also has an interest in film history, particularly in the way film as a business affects and decides the function of film as an art.

Only the River Flows Essay: Related — Soundtracks of Cinema: ‘Se7en’

Categories: 2020s , 2024 Film Essays , Crime , Crime Scene by Fedor Tot , Drama , Featured , Film , Movies , Mystery , Thriller

Tagged as: 2023 , 2023 Film , 2023 Movie , Chloe Maayan , Crime Movie , Drama Movie , Fedor Tot , Film Actors , Film Actresses , Film Critic , Film Criticism , Film Director , Film Essay , Film Explained , Film Journalism , Film Publication , Film Summary , He bian de cuo wu , Journalism , Movie Actors , Movie Actresses , Movie Critic , Movie Director , Movie Essay , Movie Explained , Movie Journalism , Movie Plot , Movie Publication , Movie Summary , Mystery Movie , Only the River Flows , Rotten Tomatoes , Streaming , Thriller Movie , Tianlai Hou , Wei Shujun , Yilong Zhu

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More than 70 killed in multiple armed attacks in Pakistan’s Balochistan

The Balochistan Liberation Army claims at least one of the attacks, with past similar incidents staged by them.

More than 70 people have been killed in four assaults amid several reported incidents of violence in Balochistan province in southwestern Pakistan, according to military and police officials.

The country’s military said 14 soldiers and police, as well as 21 militants, were killed in fighting after the largest of the attacks, which targeted vehicles on a major highway in Bela, a town in Lasbela district.

In a separate attack in Musakhel district, local officials said at least 23 civilians were killed after attackers determined they were from Punjab, with 35 vehicles set ablaze.

And in Kalat, 10 people were reported to have been killed – five police and five civilians – after a police post and a highway were attacked.

On the same day, rail traffic with Quetta was suspended following blasts on a rail bridge in the town of Bolan, linking the provincial capital to the rest of Pakistan, as well as on a rail link to neighbouring Iran, railways official Muhammad Kashif said.

Police said they had found six as yet unidentified bodies near the site of the attack on the railway bridge.

Balochistan province has had a simmering rebellion for years, with several armed groups present. Rights groups have denounced Pakistan’s response to the movement, which they document as including enforced disappearances and other forms of state repression.

The attacks, along the highway that connects to the province of Punjab, came shortly after the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) warned people to stay away from highways in the province.

In a statement, the group said its fighters targeted military personnel travelling in civilian clothes, who were shot once they were identified.

Pakistan’s Ministry of Interior, however, said the dead were innocent citizens.

“Vehicles travelling to and from Punjab were inspected, and individuals from Punjab were identified and shot,” Najibullah Kakar, a senior official in Musakhail, told the AFP news agency.

The injured were moved to a hospital in Dera Ghazi Khan, the nearest large medical facility.

President Asif Ali Zardari and Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi in separate statements called the Musakhail attack “barbaric” and pledged that the attackers would not get away with it.

Uzma Bukhari, a spokesperson for the Punjab provincial government, denounced the assaults as “a matter of grave concern” and called on the Balochistan provincial government to “step up efforts to eliminate BLA terrorists”.

Balochistan Chief Minister Sarfraz Bugti also promised that the attackers would be brought to justice.

According to local media, 12 rebel fighters were killed by security forces throughout the province in the past 24 hours.

Similar past attacks in Balochistan have been claimed by the BLA, such as the killing of seven barbers in Gwadar in May, or the April killings of several people abducted from a highway .

Armed groups like the BLA in the resource-rich but otherwise impoverished province have secessionist aims, often targeting labourers from Punjab coming to the area to work.

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Pakistani judge acquits a man over spreading misinformation that sparked riots in UK

Members of media chase Farhan Asif, center, a freelance web developer who was arrested and charged with cyber terrorism for his alleged role in spreading misinformation that led to widespread rioting in the U.K. earlier this month, as he leaves with officials after his court appearance, in Lahore, Pakistan, Monday, Aug. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/K.M. Chaudary)

Farhan Asif, a freelance web developer who was arrested and charged with cyber terrorism for his alleged role in spreading misinformation that led to widespread rioting in the U.K. earlier this month, leaves with officials after his court appearance, in Lahore, Pakistan, Monday, Aug. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/K.M. Chaudary)

Farhan Asif, center, a freelance web developer who was arrested and charged with cyber terrorism for his alleged role in spreading misinformation that led to widespread rioting in the U.K. earlier this month, is escorted by officials for his court appearance, in Lahore, Pakistan, Monday, Aug. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/K.M. Chaudary)

Farhan Asif, second left, a freelance web developer who was arrested and charged with cyber terrorism for his alleged role in spreading misinformation that led to widespread rioting in the U.K. earlier this month, leaves with officials after his court appearance, in Lahore, Pakistan, Monday, Aug. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/K.M. Chaudary)

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LAHORE, Pakistan (AP) — A Pakistani judge on Monday acquitted a man who was charged with spreading misinformation that helped spark widespread rioting in the U.K. earlier this month, officials said.

The decision came less than a week after Farhan Asif, a 32-year-old web developer, was arrested in a raid on his home in Lahore, the capital of eastern Punjab province, and charged with cyberterrorism.

After a hearing Monday, the judge ordered the release of Asif, who walked free. He told the judge that he deleted his post on social media only six hours after realizing that it was not correct.

Federal investigators told the judge that they had no evidence to prove that he was guilty of intentionally spreading misinformation, Rana Rizwan, a defense lawyer, told reporters.

The Federal Investigation Agency had accused Asif of spreading misinformation on YouTube and Facebook about the British teenage suspect in a stabbing attack that killed three girls and injured 10 other people on July 29 at a dance class in northwest England.

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France Confronts Horror of Rape and Drugging Case as 51 Men Go on Trial

A man is accused of drugging his wife and then inviting dozens of men to rape her over almost a decade. The questions raised by the case have unsettled the country.

By Catherine Porter and Ségolène Le Stradic

Reporting from Paris

For years, she had been losing hair and weight. She had started forgetting whole days, and sometimes appeared to be in dreamlike trances. Her children and friends worried she had Alzheimer’s.

But in late 2020, after she was summoned to a police station in southern France, she learned a far more shattering story.

Her husband of 50 years, Dominique Pelicot, had been crushing sleeping pills into her food and drink to put her into a deep sleep, the police said, and then raping her. He had ushered dozens of men into her home to film them raping her, too, they said, in abuse that lasted nearly a decade.

Using the man’s photographs, videos and online messages, the police spent the next two years identifying and charging those other suspects.

On Monday, 51 men, including Mr. Pelicot, went on trial in Avignon, in a case that has shocked France and cast a spotlight on the use of drugs to commit sexual abuse and the broader culture in which such crimes could occur.

The accused men represent a kaleidoscope of working-class and middle-class French society: truck drivers, soldiers, carpenters and trade workers, a prison guard, a nurse, an I.T. expert working for a bank, a local journalist. They range in age from 26 to 74. Many have children and are in relationships.

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Essay on Crime

Students are often asked to write an essay on Crime in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Crime

Understanding crime.

Crime refers to acts that violate the law. They are considered harmful and punishable by a governing authority. Crimes can range from theft to murder.

Types of Crimes

There are various types of crimes. Violent crimes include actions like assault, while theft falls under property crimes. White-collar crimes involve fraud or embezzlement.

Consequences of Crime

Crimes have severe consequences. They can lead to imprisonment, fines, or even death penalties. Moreover, they harm communities and individuals, causing fear and damage.

Preventing Crime

Preventing crime involves law enforcement, education, and community programs. Everyone can contribute to a safer society by obeying laws and reporting suspicious activities.

250 Words Essay on Crime

Introduction.

Crime, a pervasive aspect of society, is an act that violates a law and is punishable by the state. It disruptively breaches societal norms, creating a sense of insecurity and fear. This essay delves into the nature of crime, its causes, and the role of law enforcement.

The Nature of Crime

Crime is a complex phenomenon, varying across cultures and societies. It ranges from minor offences like theft to severe ones like homicide. The nature of crime reflects societal values, as what is considered criminal is determined by the prevailing legal and moral code.

Causes of Crime

The causes of crime are multifaceted, involving biological, psychological, and sociological factors. Biological theories suggest genetic predispositions towards criminal behaviour. Psychological theories focus on the individual’s mental processes and their interaction with the environment. Sociological theories, on the other hand, emphasize societal structures and inequalities as major crime contributors.

Law Enforcement and Crime

Law enforcement agencies play a crucial role in maintaining order, preventing crime, and ensuring justice. They function as a deterrent, keeping potential criminals in check. However, their effectiveness is contingent upon their ability to adapt to evolving criminal tactics.

In conclusion, crime is a societal issue with deep roots in individual and social structures. Understanding its nature and causes is key to formulating effective strategies for prevention and control. As society evolves, so too must our approach to understanding and combating crime.

500 Words Essay on Crime

Crime, a social and legal concept, has been a part of human society since its inception. It refers to the actions that violate the norms and laws of a society, leading to harm or potential harm to individuals or the community. The study of crime, its causes, effects, and prevention, is a crucial aspect of sociology, psychology, and criminology.

Crime is a complex phenomenon, varying across societies and times. It is not static but evolves with societal norms and legal frameworks. What may be considered a crime in one society may not be in another, and similarly, what was a crime in the past might not be so today. For instance, homosexuality was once criminalized in many societies, but it is now widely accepted and decriminalized.

Types of Crime

Crimes are generally categorized into personal crimes, property crimes, inchoate crimes, statutory crimes, and financial crimes. Personal crimes involve direct harm or threat to an individual, such as assault or robbery. Property crimes involve interfering with another person’s property, like burglary or theft. Inchoate crimes are those that were started but not completed, while statutory crimes are violations of specific statutes. Financial crimes, such as fraud or embezzlement, involve the illegal conversion of property ownership.

The causes of crime are multifaceted, often interwoven with societal, psychological, and economic factors. Poverty, lack of education, substance abuse, and family violence are some common societal factors leading to crime. Psychological factors include personality disorders, low self-control, and aggression. Economic factors, such as unemployment or income inequality, also contribute significantly to crime rates.

Effects of Crime

Crime prevention strategies are as diverse as the causes of crime. They include social strategies, such as improving education and employment opportunities, and legal strategies, such as effective law enforcement and fair judicial systems. Psychological interventions, like counseling and therapy, can also play a significant role in crime prevention.

Understanding crime is essential to creating a safe and harmonious society. By examining its nature, types, causes, effects, and prevention, we can develop effective strategies to reduce crime rates and mitigate its impact on individuals and communities. It is a collective responsibility that requires the concerted efforts of individuals, communities, and governments.

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

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Daily Times

Your right to know Wednesday, September 04, 2024

Shared Grief of Gender-Based Crime

Salma Tahir

September 3, 2024

The recent tragic and horrifying incident involving the rape and murder of a young 31-year-old trainee medic on August 9 at one of the largest government-run hospitals and medical colleges, RG Kar Medical College in Kolkata, India, has shaken the entire nation. These incidents of gender-related violence are hardly unique to India.

Across the border, in Pakistan, the ground reality is the same. In May 2022, a woman doctor was assaulted by a patient’s attendant at Abbasi Shaheed Hospital, one of the government hospitals in Karachi. One month ago, a medical student at Avicenna Medical College was found dead under mysterious circumstances. The administration of the medical college said it was a case of suicide. However, protestors at the college alleged that a professor named Masood Nizam Tabassum had been harassing the girl in the weeks before her death, and she was under extreme mental duress. They also accused the chairman of the college, retired army officer, Abdul Waheed Sheikh, of abusive tactics, including making women medical students sit on the floor in “a very odd manner.”

Despite the protests, nothing has been done to investigate the death or bring the perpetrators to justice. Women patients as young as five years old are not safe in hospitals. This was underscored by a case that occurred a while back at Lahore’s Ganga Ram Hospital, where a young five-year-old girl was raped by a sanitation worker at the hospital. Doctors at the hospital have been protesting the lack of safe conditions at the hospital all along to little avail. Remember how we treated Mukhtara Mai, Dr Shazia, and countless other women who spoke out against the horrific crimes that were committed against them? A Pakistani police chief faced a growing backlash a few years back after he seemed to blame the victim in a gang rape case because she was driving at night without a male companion.

This brutal rape and murder in Kolkata targetting a professional whose very mission was to heal and protect others, has ignited a firestorm of protests and national outrage. It was not a deserted road or an isolated bus. She was not out partying or enjoying a late night with friends. She was not wearing what society calls a “provocative dress,” nor was she sending out any so-called signals. She was a doctor, fulfilling her duty in a place that, until August 9, was considered safe.

She wore a white coat, a symbol of healing, a sign of a deity on earth. Yet, despite all this, she was brutally raped and suffocated to death. Even now, there are those who ask why she went to the seminar hall, and why she was not more careful. The State Chief Minister, Mamta Banerjee, a woman herself seems to searching for reasons to blame her, rather than confronting the true horror of what was done to the victim.

This rape and murder of a trainee doctor at her own hospital has also brought up, once again, uncomfortable truths about a country that wants to be a global leader, not to say that Pakistan is any better on this front. In the sub-continent, scared women are demanding justice against rapes and the implementation of safety measures, pleading for their basic right of the need to feel safe. Even as millions of Indian and Pakistani women have joined the urban workforce in the past decade, securing their financial independence and helping to fuel their country’s rapid growth, they are still often left to bear the burden of their own safety.

Such incidents highlight the prevailing apathy, misgovernance, and lack of accountability. The authority’s apparent inclination to shield perpetrators rather than protect victims is a grave miscarriage of justice. Such incidents should be taken as a wake-up call for governments to prioritize the safety and security of women of all castes and religions. Having faced similar conditions and equally fed up with official and institutional apathy on the issue of women’s security, Pakistani women stand with Indian women as they take to the streets, stage sit-ins, and make social media content drawing attention to the dangerous conditions faced by women, doctors and otherwise in their workplaces.

Longstanding customs in both countries that both repress women and in many cases confine them to the home have made their safety in public spaces an afterthought. The fact that men are predators everywhere is not an excuse for the larger misogynistic mindset that fuels such crimes. All cultures and all societies can produce a world that is safe for both men and women. However, such an outcome can only occur if there is an open and public debate about why men in India and Pakistan think that women, particularly those who work in public spaces, are targets to women, intimidate and exploit. It can be dangerous for a woman to use public transportation, especially at night, and sexual harassment occurs frequently on the streets and in offices. Mothers tell their daughters to be watchful. Brothers and husbands drop their sisters and wives off at work.

Longstanding customs that repress women and confine them to the home have made their safety in public spaces an afterthought.

The inhuman atrocities against women of this region continue. There is no change. No lessons learned, no lessons taught, and no fear instilled within our societies to prevent harassment, molestation, and sexual crimes from occurring. We live in a society that teaches women to be careful not to get raped instead of sensitizing men to not perceive rape as being powerful and masculine. Rape is the only crime in which the victim generally becomes the accused. I will never understand why it is more shameful to be raped than to be a rapist.

Rape victims wait for as long as 15 years to get justice whereas the culprit does not fear the whip as even convicted, they get merely ten years of imprisonment. The path to justice is painfully, heartbreakingly, and unsafely slow. No wonder they say that justice delayed is justice denied. We, women, cry tears of blood and despair as we wait to be safe and protected.

Today, the pervasive objectification of women, fueled by exposure to degrading content and pornography, is contributing to the increasing violence against them. It is the small things we overlook that eventually lead to these horrific incidents. Women are not products; they are individuals with feelings and emotions, often ignored by society. How long will we keep telling girls to stay safe instead of raising our voices against the men who make them feel unsafe? We cannot go away by saying “pray for X” and expect change. Both nations prayed for their respective rape victims but nothing changed. It is time to stop treating prayers as a solution. Building safer societies requires comprehensive measures, including victim support services, legal aid, psychological counseling, and community awareness campaigns. It is imperative to review and strengthen existing policies for women’s protection to ensure their effectiveness.

Women must be free from fear and violence. We remember, mourn and we cry for all the victims of brutal rapes. But who will it be tomorrow? A victim is not just a name; she is a living, breathing woman, a soul full of dreams and fears, a human being made of flesh and blood. What is destroyed in those vile acts are not just their bodies but the very essence of hope and humanity. In this recent tragedy, it was not only her bones that were shattered, nor just her flesh that was violated; it was the trust in men to protect, the belief in justice, the very foundation of our shared humanity.

We fight today, not just for Moumitha’s body, but for the hope that was torn apart, the fear that was unleashed, and the shattered belief that women are safe. We, women, fight to reclaim justice, restore the broken, and heal the wounds left on our collective conscience. Our mothers, our sisters, and our daughters should be able to walk in a society that is not shared by monsters.

The author is an ex-banker and a freelance columnist. She can be reached at tbjs.cancer.1954 gmail.com.

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'I screwed up,' motorcyclist charged with killing UD freshman said, court documents claim

The motorcyclist charged with fatally hitting a University of Delaware freshman was being taken to an area hospital when he made a damning remark, court documents claim.

"I screwed up," Brian Briddle was quoted as saying inside an ambulance taking him to Christiana Hospital, according to court documents obtained by Delaware Online/The News Journal.

Briddle was arrested on Thursday – his 27th birthday – and has been charged with second-degree murder in the death of  18-year-old Noelia Gomez of Clark, New Jersey .

Gomez, whose LinkedIn profile said she was studying accounting and business management at UD, was crossing a Newark street a little before midnight when Briddle hit her as he fled from an attempted police stop.

More: Delaware, New Jersey communities mourn UD freshman fatally hit by motorcycle near campus

What court documents say

Briddle was operating a 2008 Yamaha motorcycle on East Main Street late Tuesday when a UD officer noticed the motorcycle was not showing a license plate.

When the UD officer activated his emergency lights at East Main and South Chapel streets, court records said the officer's dash cam shows Briddle drive into the right lane.

Then something else happened.

"Just before Haines Street the motorcycle fled the stop by accelerating away at a high rate of speed as seen on the dash camera and heard on the dash camera's audio of the motorcycle engine revving," the court documents said.

As Briddle sped away, court documents said the officer did not pursue him and also turned his emergency lights off.

Briddle, according to court documents, can be seen running several stop lights on East Main Street. His actions were captured on the officer's dashcam and several Newark surveillance cameras.

First day of classes at University of Delaware

Tuesday was the first day of fall semester classes at UD, resulting in East Main Street having a lot of people.

"There were vehicles parked along the roadway, vehicles traveling the roadway and vehicles stopped at red lights," the court documents said. "There were many pedestrians walking along the adjacent sidewalks and crossing the roadway.

"The businesses along the roadway were still open as this occurred just before midnight and the bars were beginning to let out."

As Briddle continued to flee on West Main Street, police said, he hit Gomez, who was using the crosswalk. Briddle was ejected from the motorcycle, which continued onto the sidewalk and struck four people.

This crash occurred within one minute of the attempt to stop Briddle, police said.

What happened on the ambulance ride

Bystanders rushed to aid Gomez, who died.

When a Newark officer arrived at the scene, they found Gomez in the street, unresponsive and in cardiac arrest.

"It was apparent that the victim was struck by the motorcyclist," the court documents said.

The officer saw Briddle sitting on a nearby curb. University police had already handcuffed him.

"He was obviously injured as one of his eyes was swollen and he had a bloody face," court documents state. Because of his injuries and everything going on at the scene, police did not interview him there or perform a sobriety test.

Briddle was asked, however, what happened and the court documents claim he could not remember.

He was loaded into an ambulance and taken to Christiana Hospital. A Newark police officer accompanied him.

It was during this ambulance ride that court documents said the officer heard Briddle say he screwed up.

Driver says he doesn't like how police treat motorcyclists

Briddle was interviewed at Christiana Hospital, where court records said he told the detective he did not remember police attempting to stop him or the crash.

"Briddle did state that he would have run from police because his motorcycle was not registered and he did not like the way that police officers treat motorcyclists," the court document said.

While Briddle does have a valid Delaware license, police said his license did not have a motorcycle endorsement. A search found that the motorcycle had last been registered in Virginia by another person who reported it sold.

Briddle was arrested on Thursday at his house and charged with second-degree murder, a weapons offense and several traffic violations. He was being held at Howard R. Young Correctional Institution in Wilmington on Friday after failing to post more than $362,000 in cash bail.

His preliminary hearing is scheduled for Sept. 12 in the Court of Common Pleas.

More: Motorcyclist charged with killing UD freshman as he sped from traffic stop, police say

Send tips or story ideas to Esteban Parra at (302) 324-2299 or [email protected] .