Barrister Naveed Qazi
The attack on an Australian-origin family in Punjab has done something that years of quiet criticism could not. It has forced the Crime Control Department into the open, placed its model under a public microscope, and revealed a contradiction so fundamental that it cannot be explained away by press conferences or daily briefings. The CCD, a department whose operational identity is built around extrajudicial action and police encounters, is now being asked to investigate, gather evidence, pursue prosecution, and seek a judicial verdict. In doing so, it has inadvertently admitted that the model it represents is not sufficient, and perhaps never was.
This is not a minor procedural inconsistency. It is a conceptual collapse. If justice in this case requires investigation, evidence, a prosecutor, and a judge, then every case requires the same. There is no principled basis on which to say that some suspects deserve a trial while others deserve a bullet. The moment that distinction is drawn on the basis of nationality, media attention, or diplomatic pressure, the entire foundation of the encounter model is exposed as selective, arbitrary, and indefensible.
The CCD was presented to the public as a bold solution to rising crime. Its encounters were framed as necessary, inevitable, and even heroic. Critics who raised questions about due process, legal procedure, and constitutional rights were dismissed as soft on crime or indifferent to public safety. Yet here is a single case, involving a family with foreign ties and the attendant international visibility, and the entire department is on the defensive, issuing clarifications daily and promising exactly the kind of institutional response it had previously bypassed.
What this moment reveals is not just the weakness of the CCD model but the weakness of any governance approach built around individuals and shortcuts rather than systems and law. States do not run on the courage or ruthlessness of one department. They run on institutions that function consistently, transparently, and within the bounds of the constitution. Pakistan’s criminal justice system, for all its delays and dysfunctions, exists precisely because no society can survive when punishment is administered without proof and death is delivered without trial.
The solution has always been visible, even if inconvenient. Pakistan needs to return to a criminal justice model that is constitutional in structure and reformed in practice. The police must arrest suspects and gather evidence through professional, impartial investigation. The prosecution must build and argue cases before courts. The judiciary must deliver verdicts, and it must do so swiftly. The chronic problem in Pakistan has never been the existence of this model but the failure to invest in it, modernise it, and hold it accountable.
Reform, not replacement, is the answer. Case decisions that currently take years can be structured to conclude within fourteen to twenty-one days through dedicated courts, trained prosecutors, and enforceable timelines. Public trust is not built through fear of extrajudicial force. It is built through the visible and consistent delivery of legal justice. When people see that the guilty are caught, tried, and punished through a process they can observe and understand, confidence in the state grows. When they see that outcomes depend on who you know or which country issued your passport, that confidence collapses.
It is also worth stating clearly that genuine police encounters do occur. There are moments in active operations when officers face armed resistance and must respond with force. No serious person denies this reality. But these are exceptions governed by law, not a model to be institutionalised and celebrated. The professional capabilities of the police in handling such moments must be continuously developed through training in modern weaponry, intelligence gathering, situational judgment, and operational discipline. The goal is officers who can act lawfully under pressure, not officers who treat encounters as a substitute for investigation.
The CCD now faces a question it cannot answer from within its own logic. How does it invoke investigation, prosecution, and judicial trial in this case while its broader model exists precisely to bypass these institutions? It cannot have both. Either the Australian family case is an exception, which means the model remains, or it is a turning point, which means the model must change. There is no third position that preserves credibility.
One high-profile case involving foreign nationals has pushed an entire department into a posture it was never designed for. That alone should tell policymakers everything they need to know. The lasting answer to crime is not speed of punishment without proof. It is strength of law, quality of investigation, and independence of the judiciary. Pakistan has the constitutional framework. What it needs is the political will to make it work.
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