[DAWN] THERE have been many ineffective campaigns against deaths in police custody in the past, and we should like to hope that the present public outrage will lead to some concrete steps to rid the country’s criminal justice system of one of its major flaws.The signs, though, are not very promising. A man’s death in jug was attributed to a heart attack and a woman’s to haemorrhage. Death caused by fear of torture cannot be accepted as natural. A police comment on Salahuddin’s death by torture was that he was making big money, ie torturing him was justified. Now the use of smartphones at cop shoppes has been banned across Punjab; this will not end torture in jug. In fact, people will be deprived of a source of information about police excesses. Obviously, coppers, at least many of them, are surprised at the outcry over a routine practice that has always been known to the top police echelons and the government ‐ in fact, has often been encouraged by both.
The recent excesses by the Punjab