Shoaib Iqbal Raja had come all the way from Britain just to vote for his cousin Raja Moeen Sultan in the local government election held in Rawalpindi district this week. But, the young man met a violent death at a Dhamial polling station, instead.

His family was arranging his funeral the next morning rather than seeing him off at the airport to return to London as he had planned.

It should have been a peaceful election, though, as, like in 13 other districts of the province, the Punjab government had ordered elaborate security measures for the election day.

Passions whipped up by rival contestants during the campaign do sometimes burst out in violence, but Dhamial`s people say they saw no army, paramilitary or patrols in Union Council 86 where Raja Moeen, a nephew of former Punjab law minister Raja Basharat, was pitched against the ruling PML-N candidate, numberdar Asad Mehmood, in a tense fight for the office of chairman of the union council.

Even though Dhamial was listed among the `most sensitive` polling stations, they said there was no CCTV installed to capture the scene when shots rang out there killing Shoaib and wounding four other supporters of Raja Moeen.

Events that followed the tragedy further deepened the pain of the aggrieved party, which named Asad Mehmood and his brother Ikhlaq as the main accused in the murder case. Both vanished after the crime.

Asad is alleged to be close to a federal minister and being involved in attacking a police patrol for holding up two Afghan nationals he claimed to be his voters.

`It should be probed why the police and the station house officer were not at the polling station they were supposed to be deployed at,` demanded an irate family member.

After remaining `untraceable` for five days, police captured Asad Mehmood and his two alleged `facilitators` in Karachi on Wednesday night and brought them to Rawalpindi. The other main accused, Ikhlaq, however, is still at large and the search for him continues.

Normally, a person accused of attacking police is immediately arrested. In the case of Asad Mehmood, however, an inquiry was instituted to ascertain the circumstances. Although, the inquiry led to fixing the charge, critics say the time it took allowed Asad to secure pre-arrest bail and avoid further legal proceedings by the police.

Such suspicions deepened when the police did nothing to get his bail cancelled. `Had the police done that, the tragedy of December 5, which took the life of Raja Shoaib, might not have happened,` argue critics.

Any police sloppiness apart, easy access to firearms is also counted as a factor in violent crimes.

According to a police expert, acquisition of illicit weapons reflects the citizens` lack of confidence in police and governments.

And the society is flushed with illegal firearms because they are easily available but also cheap, he said.

`There is no regulatory authority to stem the illegal trade,` he said.

`Weapons mostly arrive from Fata and Afghanistan and they are just a three-hour drive away to buy for anyone living in Rawalpindi or Islamabad.

`Despite the strict laws and severe punishments for keeping illegal weapons, the state could not control the use of guns because people lack trust in law enforcers,` the expert said.

A senior police officer said the arms licensing system needs to be changed. `Because police know arms and the arms holders better, the police department should be issuing arm licenses and not the district administrations as at present,` he said.

`Don`t the power to issue driving license and impose fines lie with the traffic police,` he asked.

While the rise of extremism and terrorism has made deweaponisation of societies a world issue, he said, the police in Pakistan have been implementing the counterterrorism National Action Plan by merely registering cases against tenants and owners of houses, and wall-chalking hate messages.