Murtaza Bhutto

acquired in the last couple of years, only a very naive person would expect
that violence would not occur in a confrontation between them and Mir
Murtaza's armed bodyguards. It is significant that people driving past the
Bhuttos' Clifton residence earlier that fateful evening had noticed the
presence of scores of heavily armed policemen. The official line that the police
did not recognise Murtaza Bhutto cannot be believed: at 6' 2", he was an
imposing figure of a man. And even if a credulous person swallows the
police's version of the sequence of events until the firing took place, what is
incomprehensible and unforgivable is that he was allowed to bleed,
unconscious and unattended on the street for nearly an hour before he was
finally taken to a nearby hospital where the poor man succumbed to his
multiple gunshot wounds. Conspiracy theories apart, this tragedy highlights
the incompetence and indiscipline endemic in our police force. When you
give illiterate, poorly paid and untrained men automatic weapons and a
licence to kill, officially-sanctioned murder and mayhem should surprise
nobody. Indeed the government's unwritten directive to the police to shoot to
kill has resulted in hundreds of manufactured armed encounters of the type
Murtaza Bhutto perished in. The two common features in these bloody
incidents are that the police hardly ever suffer any casualties, and the victims
are usually shot from point-blank range. One intriguing aspect of this killing
is that despite the presence of so many officers, the trigger-happy cops could
not be restrained as they went on a firing spree that lasted for over half an
hour. But perhaps it is unfair to expect very high standards of our officers:
many of them were nominated by the government for UN assignments in
Bosnia last year, but almost every one of them flunked the English-language
and driving tests.
It is a sobering thought that had Murtaza Bhutto not been accompanied by
his armed bodyguards, he might have been alive today because the cops
would have been less trigger-happy, and it would have been difficult to
fabricate an "armed encounter" with an unarmed group. Indeed, this country
is so awash with guns that the smallest altercation now leads to a shoot-out.
The Interior Minister's contribution to solving this problem is to suggest that
citizens should arm themselves to combat criminals and terrorists. He could
have added the police to this list of potential danger. But ever since the
arming of Pakistan began in earnest in the early eighties under Zia, successive
governments have turned a blind eye to this dangerous trend. Instead of
shutting down the arms bazaars of the northern areas, politicians flaunt
armed bodyguards as a status symbol.
Murtaza Bhutto; Copyright © www.bhutto.org
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