Recently a 13-year old student from class IX, Amjad Ali was arrested from Mirpurkhas by the Lahore police. The only crime that this child had committed was that he was related to one Aslam, who was wanted in a theft case and couldn’t be located. The innocent minor was detained for seven days behind bars without committing any crime. Despite the fact that he was innocent and a minor, these officers lodged a false case of theft against the boy, recovering Rs20,000 from his possession when they found that higher authorities were pressing charges against them.

There are no juvenile jails or courts in Pakistan to try juvenile offenders, who have committed a crime; they are dealt with in the same way as all the other criminals. Which is why Amjad Ali, who was innocent of any crime, must have also been locked up with hardened criminals and serious offenders, marring his vision of life, which for him hasn’t even started?

Juvenile offenders in Pakistan are not sent to rehabilitation cells or centres as these don’t exist in Pakistan. They are left to languish among real criminals, who play the part of guides and role models for them and from there many embark on the path towards real crime. They are left to be abused and molested by the inmates and officials until their hearings, which are usually put off as is a norm in our country prolonging them to the crude exposure and making their return to a normal life a bleak reality.

Arresting the kith and kin of an accused is a common phenomenon in Pakistan. The police use this inhumane practice not to mention illegal tactics to extract the accused from hiding. At times women relatives of the accused have been detained until the actual person(s) does not surrender. But nothing has been done to eliminate such ‘investigation’ and they carry on unabated.

If strict punishments, including fines, imprisonments and suspension from duty were to be awarded to the offending officers for using such unorthodox methods to make arrests, police officers would be more responsible for their acts