Editorial
The rage that follows the murder of an innocent child is legitimate. It is human. But rage, however justified, cannot be permitted to become state policy. When police eliminate an accused in an encounter rather than presenting him before a court, the state does not deliver justice. It performs theatre, and dangerous theatre at that, because it removes the very process through which guilt is established, evidence is tested, and society’s collective conscience is formally engaged.
Pakistan does not need faster bullets. It needs faster courts.
A criminal justice system rebuilt around speed, transparency, and forensic rigour is the only answer that actually works. Trials completed within fifteen to twenty-one days, with a structured appeals process confined to an equally tight window, would transform public confidence in the law more decisively than any encounter ever could. Public accountability for heinous crimes, including proportionate and publicly visible punishment following due process, creates genuine deterrence. An encounter creates a corpse and a rumour. A trial creates a record, a verdict, and a lesson.
DNA profiling, fingerprint databases, and forensic evidence must be formally integrated into the law of evidence. Investigation must be professionalised and insulated from bribery. The moment a case rests on science rather than on a tortured confession, the entire culture of the police changes.
Beyond the courtroom, society itself demands reform. Economic stability that enables young men to marry and build lives, accessible education, drug eradication, and the expansion of wholesome recreational spaces are not peripheral concerns. They are the structural conditions that reduce the desperation from which crime emerges.
And none of this is possible while unaccountable power continues to install and remove governments at will. Independent courts require an independent state. That remains the foundational demand.
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