Islamabad, April 24: A damning alternate report submitted by Pakistan's National Commission for Human Rights (NCHR) to the UN Committee against Torture has laid bare deep structural failures in the country's legal framework against custodial abuse, local media reported. The report, filed ahead of Pakistan's compliance review under the Convention against Torture, reveals critical shortcomings in the implementation of the Torture and Custodial Death (Prevention and Punishment) Act, 2022. Despite over a decade since ratification, torture by law enforcement agencies remains a systemic crisis.

Key Findings of the NCHR Report

The NCHR report identifies multiple legislative deficiencies that undermine Pakistan's stated commitment to eliminating torture. Chief among them is a statutory definition of torture that fails to fully align with international human rights standards, most notably the absence of any explicit reference to psychological pain and suffering.

The report further flags inadequate provisions for victim rehabilitation and compensation, poorly defined penalty structures, and unclear mechanisms for complaint registration and investigation. Medical examination procedures for torture victims also fall short of internationally accepted protocols, according to the findings.

Procedural gaps compound the problem. The report notes limited scope for independent or suo-motu investigations, meaning that in most cases, accountability depends entirely on institutions that are themselves accused of abuse — a structural conflict of interest that rights groups have long warned about.

Extrajudicial Killings: A Systemic Pattern in Punjab

Beyond legal technicalities, the human cost of Pakistan's torture crisis is starkly visible on the ground. A lady health worker from Muzaffargarh, Punjab, has appealed directly to the country's Chief Justice to order an independent probe into the alleged police encounter killing of her two sons — a case that encapsulates the broader erosion of public trust in provincial authorities.

Her case is far from isolated. As Dawn noted in a recent editorial, what were once sporadic instances of police staging encounters to eliminate suspected criminals have now evolved into what critics describe as a systemic extrajudicial practice. Media reports and rights organisations estimate that hundreds of police encounters in recent months across Punjab province have resulted in a staggering number of deaths.

Alarmingly, rather than triggering accountability, some of these killings have drawn public praise from political authorities, who have framed them as an effective deterrent against crime. Rights groups warn this amounts to tacit state endorsement of extrajudicial execution as official crime-control policy.

Why Pakistan's Police Resort to Torture: The Systemic Failure

A recurring justification within Pakistan's law enforcement ecosystem is that an under-resourced, under-equipped police force, burdened by a severely clogged judicial system, has little practical choice but to use coercive methods. This narrative, while widely circulated, is directly contradicted by Pakistan's persistent law-and-order crisis — suggesting that torture and encounters are not solving the crime problem, but entrenching it.

The reliance on eliminating suspects rather than prosecuting them signals a fundamental breakdown in investigation, evidence-gathering, and trial processes. When the state selectively decides who deserves constitutional rights — including the right to a fair trial — it crosses what legal experts call a dangerous threshold of institutional lawlessness.

This normalisation of brutality, critics argue, does not just harm individual victims. It brutalises society at large, corrodes public trust in institutions, and blurs the critical boundary between law enforcement and vigilantism.

Historical Context: A Decade of Missed Accountability

Pakistan ratified the Convention against Torture in 2010. By 2017 — seven years later — the UN had already raised serious concerns about the absence of adequate legal safeguards and the lack of accountability for perpetrators of torture. The passage of the Torture and Custodial Death Act in 2022 was positioned as a landmark reform, but the NCHR's latest report confirms that implementation has remained largely cosmetic.

This pattern mirrors a broader governance failure in Pakistan, where legislative reform is often announced in response to international pressure but rarely followed through with enforcement infrastructure, independent oversight, or genuine political will. The gap between law on paper and justice on the ground has, if anything, widened in recent years.

Impact on Citizens and What Comes Next

For ordinary Pakistani citizens — particularly the poor, marginalised, and those without political connections — the failure of custodial protections translates directly into vulnerability to state violence with no meaningful recourse. The NCHR report being before the UN Committee against Torture now creates international pressure that Islamabad will find difficult to ignore ahead of its formal compliance review.

Rights organisations are calling for urgent amendments to the 2022 Torture Act to incorporate psychological suffering in the definition of torture, establish clearer complaint mechanisms, ensure independent investigation bodies, and guarantee meaningful compensation for victims. Whether Pakistan's political establishment responds with genuine reform or another round of performative legislation will be closely watched by the UN, civil society, and the country's own beleaguered citizens.