A man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world. — Albert Camus. Nine-year-old Hania Ahmed should still be alive. Instead, her life came to a violent and irreversible end on a road in Chakwal when personnel of Punjab's Crime Control Department (CCD) opened fire on her family's vehicle. The official explanation that followed was swift, predictable and painfully familiar: the killing was portrayed as a tragic mistake, an unfortunate lapse committed in the course of an otherwise lawful operation. According to the authorities, the officers had simply mistaken Hania and her family for suspected criminals.
To characterise Hania Ahmed's death merely as a mistake is to obscure a more disturbing reality. The recent report of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) should compel a national reckoning with this reality. According to the Commission, at least 670 CCD-led encounters took place between April and December 2025, resulting in 924 deaths. The Commission further documented concerns regarding formulaic FIRs, failures to conduct mandatory inquiries, the absence of independent witnesses, and allegations that some individuals had been subjected to unlawful detention before being killed in encounters.
Systemic Failure Beyond Individual Error
The concerns raised by the HRCP extend beyond questions of individual culpability. What occurred in Chakwal was neither an operational failure nor an isolated incident detached from its broader institutional context. It is the foreseeable consequence of a policing model in Punjab, under Maryam Nawaz Sharif's administration, that has increasingly prioritised and incentivised encounter-based operations over investigation, prosecution and due process. Under Maryam Nawaz-led CCD, institutional success is measured primarily by encounter statistics rather than the quality of investigations, the strength of evidence or convictions secured through lawful judicial processes. In such an environment, the likelihood of excessive force becomes not an aberration but an inevitability.
Such a framework risks cultivating a culture in which immediate coercive action is rewarded while the painstaking work of professional policing and adherence to the rule of law is relegated to secondary importance. The issue before us, therefore, is not merely whether a mistake occurred in Chakwal. The more pressing question is whether the CCD, as an institution, has evolved in a manner that makes such tragedies inevitable.
Institutional Culture and Impunity
Institutions do not develop operational cultures in isolation; they evolve within environments that reward certain forms of conduct and discourage others. When encounter-based policing is portrayed as evidence of effectiveness, and when officers come to believe that the use of lethal force will be met with commendation from their political masters rather than scrutiny, the consequences are predictable. In the absence of accountability for excessive, disproportionate or arbitrary uses of force, a climate of impunity inevitably emerges. Within such an environment, the rule of law is gradually displaced by the belief that force is a substitute for justice.
Almost every incident involving the CCD appears to follow the same script: the police were transporting an arrested suspect; his accomplices suddenly attacked the convoy in an attempt to secure his release; and, in the ensuing exchange of fire, the suspect was killed. No institution operating within a democratic framework can be permitted to act simultaneously as investigator, prosecutor, judge and executioner. The concentration of such powers within a single authority is fundamentally incompatible with the principles of accountability upon which constitutional systems are built. It also violates the centuries-old doctrine of separation of powers, a foundational principle upon which democratic republics are founded. Pakistan's own constitutional parlance reflects the same commitment to limiting the arbitrary exercise of state power.
Constitutional Safeguards Against Extrajudicial Killings
The Constitution of Pakistan provides a clear answer to this challenge. Article 4 guarantees an indivisible and inalienable right: a right that guarantees that every individual shall be dealt with in accordance with the law. Article 9 protects the right to life and liberty, while Article 10A secures the right to a fair trial and due process. As has been observed by the superior courts, the right to life is the most precious right guaranteed by the Constitution, and even the State possesses no authority to violate it unlawfully. These are not procedural technicalities designed to frustrate law enforcement; they are the safeguards that distinguish constitutional governance from totalitarian rule. The life and liberty of a citizen constitute the most fundamental of rights and cannot be interfered with except strictly in accordance with the law. The State's monopoly over the legitimate use of force is accompanied by a corresponding obligation to exercise that force within clearly defined legal boundaries.
The fight against crime is both legitimate and necessary. Crime remains a serious challenge, and citizens have every right to expect the State to protect them from violence and insecurity. The problem arises when effectiveness is measured solely by the number of alleged offenders killed rather than by the quality of investigations, the integrity of prosecutions and the public's confidence in the justice system. The true test of a criminal justice system lies not merely in its capacity to incapacitate offenders but in its ability to uphold legality while doing so.
Supreme Court's Stance on Custodial Killings
In Khalid Mehmood v DPO (2026 PLD 205 SC), the Supreme Court of Pakistan held that the Constitution imposes a duty upon the State to protect the right to life of every citizen and to prevent custodial killings. The Court observed that constitutional guarantees against extrajudicial killings in any form constitute bedrock legal principles enshrined in the Constitution. We do not need trigger-happy police personnel who liquidate suspected criminals and subsequently portray such killings as encounters. Such acts must be unequivocally condemned. They find no sanction within our criminal justice system and constitute a grave abuse of state power.
Almost every incident involving the CCD appears to follow the same script: the police were transporting an arrested suspect; his accomplices suddenly attacked the convoy in an attempt to secure his release; and, in the ensuing exchange of fire, the suspect was killed. While such narratives may possess the simplicity of an Aesop's fable, the repetition of the same storyline across hundreds of encounters inevitably raises serious questions about the veracity of these accounts. Sadly, the CCD has increasingly come to resemble a killing (encounter) machine, animated by a self-righteous and quasi-Puritan mindset that sees itself not as an institution bound by law but as a moral arbiter empowered to determine who deserves to live and who does not. It is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish the CCD from the wild beast described by Albert Camus.
Strengthening Institutions Over Bypassing Due Process
A criminal justice system that relies excessively on encounters risks weakening the very institutions responsible for delivering justice through lawful means. Sustainable crime control depends not upon bypassing due process but upon strengthening the investigative, prosecutorial and judicial capacities of the State. The answer to inefficiency within the justice system cannot be the abandonment of the constitutional principles upon which that system rests. Crime control cannot come at the expense of constitutional rights. The life of a citizen cannot be left to the unchecked discretion of those entrusted with protecting it. The pursuit of security cannot come at the expense of the principles that give the State its legitimacy.
The temptation to bypass legal procedures in pursuit of immediate outcomes may be politically attractive, but it undermines the very foundations of democratic governance. As Lord Atkin observed in his celebrated dissent in Liversidge v Anderson: "In this country, amid the clash of arms, the laws are not silent. They may be changed, but they speak the same language in war as in peace." The principle is clear: the existence of security challenges does not suspend the rule of law. The legitimacy of State action depends not only upon its objectives but also upon its adherence to constitutional constraints.
Shakespeare, in Measure for Measure, offered a timeless warning against the excesses of unchecked authority: "O, it is excellent to have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant." The State's authority to employ force derives its legitimacy not from its capacity to punish but from its fidelity to the law. Constitutional democracies endure because power remains subject to principle. If the State itself disregards the law in the name of enforcing it, respect for legality erodes. When those principles are compromised, it is not only individual rights that are endangered but the constitutional order itself.
