The Punjab government has a magic wand at its disposal which, with one wave, can seemingly cover up any and all lapses that the police and local officials may have been guilty of. This wand is known as the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) and it is liberally used

The sexual abuse case of Kasur came under the national spotlight on Aug 7 when victims’ relatives and the people belonging to Hussain Khanwala and other villages wanted to the come to Lahore to protest against the police inaction against the abusers in front of the Punjab Assembly and the press club but were forcibly stopped from doing so by the police.

The clash between protesters and police, in which 25 people were injured, brought the genie out of the bottle and the authorities had to give answers to many questions, including those about their own performance or lack of it.

On Aug 11, the government formed a JIT headed by DIG Abubakar Khuda Bakhsh and consisting of SSP Khalid Bashir Cheema, DSP Liaqat Ali and two officials of intelligence agencies.

On Aug 15, advocate Latif Sra and Mobeen Ghaznavi, a social worker, representing the victims, held a press conference and declared that the abuse victims and other protesters would march to Islamabad if police did not stop harassing them and withdrew the cases filed against them.

They also warned of rejecting the JIT while presenting demands on behalf of the abuse victims. A day later, they made good on their promise and rejected the JIT.

On Aug 18, announcements were made in Hussain Khanwala and the surrounding villages to get ready for the long march to Islamabad to force the government to provide the abuse victims support in a case in which more complainants continue appearing by the day. Four new complainants lodged another FIR, taking the total number of FIRs to 22.

“The JIT is a sham and an incomplete body as it did not have any cyber crime and forensic experts despite our demands. No investigation could be complete in this case without them as the cases are very old and involve video footage,” Latif Sra said while talking to Dawn. Besides, he claimed that police were harassing the victims and their families, and so the same police could not be trusted to carry out an investigation.

“On Aug 17, police registered a case under PPC 302 against Mobeen Ghaznavi, the social worker who brought the case into the public focus, and other complainants on charges of killing the brother of the main suspect who had died in a traffic accident in Lahore a day earlier,” Latif Sra said, adding that another case was registered against the protesters under terrorism charges (7-ATA ) over the clash they had with the police even though it was the protesters who were injured in the clash.

“How can I present the abuse victims and their families before the police officials in the JIT when they are already booked under Section PPC-302 and 7-ATA? It was our demand that police should withdraw cases against the victims and their families so that they could feel free to be present before the JIT but it did not happen and we had to boycott the JIT,” Mr Sra said.

He alleged that SP Nadeem Abbas was harassing those involved in the case and he took Mobeen Ghaznavi in custody and threatened him of being implicated in fake cases, even threatening to connect him with India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW).

He said their demand also included the transfer of SP Abbas from the area and repeated that the abuse victims and their families would march to Islamabad if their demands were not met.

Expressing apprehensions about the JIT, he said there had been many JITs formed by the Punjab government in different incidents but nobody knew what happened to their reports.

Mr Sra’s apprehensions are not unfounded. In the recent past, JIT’s have been formed to probe a number of incidents that would, under normal circumstances jolt any administration into action.

The terror attack at Wagah, the lynching of a Christian couple at Kot Radha Kishan, the attack on an imambargah in Rawalpindi in January this year, the attacks on churches in Youhanabad in Lahore, the killings of Daska Bar Association president and his colleague by police and of course the Kasur child abuse case.

In all these cases, JIT reports were not made public and responsibility was not fixed for dereliction of duty. Besides, the very police high-ups who did not in the first place fulfill their core responsibility of ensuring security and safety were themselves assigned with the task of probes.

None of the JIT reports in such high profile cases have been made public except the JIT report on Model Town incident in which 11 Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) workers were killed and over 60 were injured on June 17, 2014.

That report was revealed in May this year, almost a year after the incident, and it exonerated Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif and Law Minister Rana Sanaullah, declaring them innocent of any wrongdoing. In contrast the judicial probe conducted by a Lahore High Court judge, which had reportedly held the government responsible for the killing, was not released.

The JIT report had also gave confusing results regarding involvement of police officials in the incident while fixing no responsibility on any of them.

It said: “On rumours that PAT activists had abducted two policemen and that another policeman had been killed, some personnel of the force opened fire either on the orders of then superintendent of police (SP) security Salman Ali or at their own.”

However, it did identify 42 PAT workers from the TV footages, saying court proceedings would be carried out against them. The PAT rejected the findings of the JIT.

Besides this sole incident, no other JIT report was made public. Sixty people were killed in a suicide attack on Wagah border when people were coming back after witnessing the Rangers’ parade on Nov 2, 2014.

Read more: Kasur case: complainants boycott JIT, allege harassment

The Punjab government formed a JIT on Nov 4, consisting representatives of the Chenab Rangers, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Counter Terrorism Department, Special Branch and Punjab Police, to identify those responsible for the obvious security lapse. The team had to submit its report after three days but to date we do not know what became of it.

Two days after the Wagah attack, a Christian couple accused of blasphemy was lynched at Kot Radha Kishan, Kasur, on Nov 4, in presence of police officials, including a sub-inspector, assistant sub-inspector and other officials in a police van.

In the usual style, a JIT headed by the SP Investigation Kasur, was formed in the last week of November, 2015.

Meanwhile, due to the horrific nature of the crime, the Supreme Court also took suo motu notice of the incident and started proceedings in the case with a three-member bench headed by Justice Nasirul Mulk.

The SC during a hearing, expressed shock over the laxity shown by police and warned that a judicial inquiry might be launched to probe into police failure in protecting the couple. At this, the old JIT was dissolved and a new JIT was constituted on March 20, 2015 by the Punjab IG Mushtaq Sukhera.

The new JIT was formed despite the fact that the Kasur DPO, in his initial report before the SC, had accepted that the couple was lynched in presence of police officials who did not do anything to protect the couple from the mob. However, the report by this new JIT is still being awaited. Meanwhile, reports of the family being harassed by police to withdraw the case continued appearing in the media.

Samuel Pyara, director human rights of Voice of Christians International, said the effectiveness and validity of JIT formed by the government could be gauged from the fact that two benches of the Supreme Court , under Justice Nasirul Mulk and then under Justice Umar Ata Bandial, had rejected four different reports submitted by the JITs on the Kot Radha Kishan lynching case.

Police submitted the reports, albeit flawed ones, because of the pressure of the Supreme Court judges who on many occasions gave strong remarks on the police performance.

In March, the SC had formed a new committee under the Punjab IG to carry on the investigation into the case while disposing of the suo motu hearing of the case. However, the court had expressed satisfaction with the last report submitted to it by police on the last hearing of the case which was then forwarded to the trial court, which was then asked to expedite the proceedings.

Two churches came under terrorist attack in the Youhanabad area of Lahore on March, killing 15 people and injuring 70 others.

Violence erupted after the attacks and an angry mob also killed two people on the road. As usual, the authorities were quick to form a JIT to probe into the incident and on the order of federal interior ministry, Punjab IG Sarwar Sukhera formed a team headed by Kahna SDPO in whose jurisdiction the incident happened.

The team that included officers from the Counter Terrorism Department and Inter-Services Intelligence had to submit its report to the IG on a daily basis. Meanwhile, the residents of Youhanabad, a mainly Christian locality, continued complaining against the harassment tactics by police and also alleging that their relatives were being picked up by the authorities.

Samuel Pyara, one of the complainants in the Kot Radha Kishan case who appeared in all the hearings at the Supreme Court, further said that reports were submitted in the Kot Radha Kishan case because the SC had taken notice of the incident due to its horrific nature but no such report appeared in the Youhanabad churches attack case even though a JIT was also formed in the case.

“Instead of carrying out independent investigations into the case, police continued harassing the Christian community, picking up members of the community without any cases or charges against them.”

On Jan 9, 2015, eight people were killed and 16 wounded in a terror attack on an imambargah in the Chatian Hatian area of Rawalpindi. A JIT, headed by Rawal Town SP, was constituted the same day to probe the incident and submit its report within 14 days. But no one has heard of this report since then.

On May 25, police killed two lawyers, including Daska Bar Association President Rana Khalid Abbas, during a protest. On May 27, the Punjab government constituted a JIT to probe into the incident while at the same time requesting the LHC to appoint a judicial commission to carry investigation into the incident. However it later withdrew the request for the judicial probe on its own. The complete report by the JIT on this incident was either never made or made but never released.

Punjab police spokesperson Nabeela Ghazanfar said that reports have been completed in most of the cases where JITs were constituted and they could be shown on request.

“Sometimes, secret agencies and other such institutions were also involved in the cases so it becomes impossible to make the reports public on such sensitive issues where public safety is involved,” she said, adding that in some cases greater national interest was also involved and reports could not be made public as a result.

Ex-IG Punjab Haji Habeebur Rehman argues that there are no constitutional provisions that make it necessary for the government to form JITs and they are mostly formed for the sake of public satisfaction, transparency, and are aimed at building trust between government and the public.

He said that inquiries were completed and kept in the department record but they were revealed only wherever government considered it necessary.

However, far from being a mechanism to build trust, the above cases show that JITs are more of a tactic used by the Punjab government to sweep things under the carpet or delay matters until public sentiments cool down and the cases disappear from the public focus. It shows a lack of seriousness on the part of the government in actually reaching a conclusion, especially in cases where its own officials and authorities are involved.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, August 23rd, 2015

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