HE DG Sindh Rangers, Maj Gen Muhammad Saeed, has executed an almost perfect illustration of the saying `to crack a nut with a sledgehammer`. Addressing a news conference in Karachi on Wednesday, the head of the paramilitary force said that robbers and street criminals should be tried as terrorists under the Anti Terrorism Act and suggested that the home department was considering such a step. He went on to dilate upon the success of the Rangers-led operation in the city that he said had resulted in a steep decline in crimes such as targeted killing, kidnapping for ransom and extortion. Street crime, however, remained a concern, one that neither the Rangers nor the police had been able to curb.

When a law-enforcement agency draf ted in ostensibly to tackle the most serious crimes is tacitly given licence to use unbridled force including torture and extra judicial killings to achieve its objectives, it leaves both the law-enforcement apparatus and society brutalised. All nuance is lost: the ends justify the means. The DG Rangers` statement is certain to have struck a chord with many people, especially those who have fallen prey to street crime. However, it is for good reason that vigilante `justice`lies outside the pale of the law; crime must be prosecuted according to a dispassionate rationale. Every act of criminality does not rise to the level of terrorism, which does not mean that certain types of crime should be condoned, but that perspective is important. Equating someone who, for instance, steals mobile phones, with a target killer is overstating matters, particularly when there are several privileged individuals in our society who get away with actions that seem to constitute the legal definition of terrorism. Conflating street crime with terrorism also trivialises the crimes that attract the application of the ATA. Moreover, the DG Rangers is surely aware of how the ATCs are already clogged with cases. Adding to the bottleneck is hardly the answer.