PAKISTAN has produced writers of considerable merit for so long that now that creative writing excellence is permeating the ranks of the law-enforcement agencies.

The First Information Report (FIR) — which forms the basis of all prosecutions in Pakistan — filed after the arrest of Rana Sanaullah, the PML-N Punjab leader, is a case in point and seems to have been written by someone who has read a lot of fiction of the thriller-suspense variety.

The FIR registered by the military-led Anti-Narcotics Force (ANF) details how Rana Sanaullah’s vehicle was intercepted on the motorway as he was travelling from his Faisalabad home to Lahore, on information that he was carrying contraband narcotics.

After he was stopped, when Rana Sanaullah was asked about the narcotics he was carrying, the FIR says, he pointed to a suitcase behind his seat … he then proceeded to unzip the suitcase and tore through a plastic sheet before pointing to a sealed packet containing the heroin.

The tip off, according to the ANF, also suggested that Rana Sanaullah was ‘smuggling’ the heroin and its sale proceeds were going to go to unnamed ‘proscribed’ organisations. This was the cleverest part in the ANF charges against him.

The Punjab PML-N leader is reviled by the left and the liberals for his ties with groups such as Sipah-i-Sahaba (something he has openly admitted to and justifies in the name of engaging with them to ensure peace) as he is by the right-leaning PTI for his harsh criticism of the party and its leadership.

One wonders why Rana Sanaullah, who told a number of journalists in recent weeks that he feared arrest, would carry contraband in his own vehicle.

It wasn’t difficult to realise the implication of the mention of ‘proscribed’ groups. Political parties will always speak out in favour of their leaders whatever the merit of the charges against them. But the voice of the non-partisan liberal elements always raised in rights issues carries more weight here as well as abroad.

The Punjab PML-N politician has also made despicable comments about PPP leader Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari but the latter jumped to Rana Sanaullah’s defence after the arrest and described it as political victimisation. Unsurprisingly, the PML-N leadership too lashed out at the government’s ‘fascism’.

The FIR seemed designed to serve the twin purposes of ensnaring Rana Sanaullah in a case where he could face the death penalty and the very least life imprisonment if convicted, and denying him the backing of the underdog-supporting usual suspects: the left and the liberals.

The ANF is not alone in being a law-enforcement agency that has a penchant for photographing/ video-taping the accused in the custody of its personnel along with the seized contraband narcotics or weapons/ IEDs, whatever the case may be.

However here, where there was every reason for the ANF to record the whole raid and the recovery process so as to establish it was above board, it did not happen and quite a while later it was disclosed that 13/14 kg of heroin had been recovered from the politician’s vehicle.

By day three, the minister for narcotics control and ANF chief Major-General Arif Malik jointly addressed the media in the federal capital; very few additional details were made available apart from the minister saying the arrest had been made after weeks of surveillance.

While the minister was reluctant to divulge more details saying some of the PML-N leader’s co-conspirators in the case could have fled abroad or gone into hiding or witnesses’ lives could have been threatened, the ANF boss told a journalist that Rana Sanaullah’s remand was not sought by the ANF as it had all the evidence that it required.

Interestingly enough, what was earlier said to be a suitcase carrying the heroin became a ‘briefcase’ by the time the two officials addressed the media. When a journalist inquired why the raid was not recorded, Maj-Gen Arif Malik said it was a ‘war-like’ situation.

Elaborating, he said it needed to be appreciated that in a live raid where there were Rana Sanaullah’s armed guards and ‘our men’ (presumably armed too), besides thousands of onlookers, it was not as if a film was being shot. “We could not have asked for retakes … with the briefcase.”

Where thousands of onlookers were said to have been gathered on the motorway, not one was cited as a witness. But never mind. We have all heard the Urdu maxim ‘jis ki lathi, uski bhens’ which implies something like power flows down the barrel of a gun.

One wonders why being a lawyer himself Rana Sanaullah, who told a number of journalists in recent weeks that he feared arrest or even an assassination attempt, would carry contraband in his own vehicle in an amount just over the death penalty threshold. In this case, he seems an unlikely villain.

For weeks Rana Sanaullah’s criticism of the PTI government and powerful state institutions have placed him among a handful of PML-N leaders who have shaped themselves more in the Nawaz Sharif-Maryam Nawaz mould rather than adopt the softly, softly approach of Shahbaz Sharif.

None of this is to pronounce a verdict. It is merely to place into perspective the arrest of a politician who has suffered the wrath of the state in the Musharraf era and clearly is not a favourite with powerful institutions to this day for his vocal pro-Nawaz Sharif public stance. 

I concede I lack the creative writing skill and eye to detail to have made as good a case of raising important questions about the issue as a more skilled writer could have. Perhaps someone with the competence of the ANF writer could have done a better job. But do give me some marks for trying.  

The writer is a former editor of Dawn.

abbas.nasir@hotmail.com

Published in Dawn, July 6th, 2019