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nce on Brewery Highway, Quetta, a police officer requested their driver to cease at a departmental retailer. As they obtained out of the car with their daughter to enter the shop, an armed particular person attacked the van. The driving force was shot within the chest. The murderer had allegedly needed to kill the officer who had simply walked into the shop. The officer has just lately been appointed the primary feminine SHO of any common police station in Balochistan’s historical past.
As we enter the Quetta police station, Station Home Officer (SHO) Sobia Khanum sits behind her desk. On the wall behind her hangs an incumbency board with a dozen male officers’ names on it and just one feminine identify, the current SHO.
Carrying her uniform, two steel stars on the shoulders, the day Sub-Inspector Sobia Khanum has assumed cost as SHO. She acquired 10 instances on her first day.
Balochistan has a robust tribal tradition, and females nonetheless discover it troublesome to affix area assignments. The province has seen a lot turmoil. The civil battle has endured. From nationalist insurgency to the TTP, Balochistan has seen many challenges. Sobia Khanum has accepted workplace as a problem, understanding full properly what the job entails.
A UNODC report states that feminine law enforcement officials represent solely round 1.5 p.c of the police drive in Pakistan. This quantity is even decrease in Balochistan, the place structural and cultural limitations make it troublesome for girls to take part within the labour drive past their conventional position as homemakers.
“Nothing is not possible if one has the fervour and braveness to be totally different. In fact, not each particular person can address challenges in life,” says Khanum.
After graduating in 2009, she handed the aggressive examination of the Police Division. She stood first and was recruited as an assistant sub inspector (ASI). Throughout her service, she additionally sat and handed the LLB and grasp’s in political science levels from the College of Balochistan. “I had not knowledgeable my household about my job at first as a result of there have been solely a small variety of females within the police drive on the time,” she provides.
“Nothing is not possible if one has the fervour and braveness to be totally different. In fact, not each particular person can address challenges in life,” says Khanum.
In 2013, she investigated a baby kidnapping case. She baited the kidnapper by speaking to him utilizing a faux cellphone quantity. They arrange a gathering at an area restaurant and the offender was captured. A 9mm pistol was recovered from him. After additional investigation, Khanum recovered the kid and arrested the mastermind behind the kidnapping. The person she had met on the restaurant had bought a snatched cell phone. It was by way of his name element report that the police discovered the abductors.
Recounting one other essential case in her profession, the officer tells TNS, “Prostitution is an unlucky actuality in our nation however we have to give attention to defending the rights of all girls.” In 2014, she went undercover pretending to be a intercourse employee to get better a 14-year-old woman whom her uncle had offered and who had been delivered to Quetta from the Punjab. “The woman revealed that she had been raped by greater than 40 folks. We took her to a Dar-ul-Amaan. All culprits had been caught and prosecuted,” she says.
As a single mom of two, Sobia Khanum is conscious of the challenges life presents, however she is taking these on confidently.
The Balochistan Police inspector normal is supportive and needs to supply extra platforms to girls. “After I acquired the notification of my appointment, I used to be fairly shocked. After I arrived right here, the environment was tense, however all my colleagues have been very supportive,” says Khanum. “After becoming a member of, I known as all personnel and guaranteed them that we are going to work as a group,” she says.
In 2013, Sobia Khanum acquired a name from Saryab Highway the place a truck suspected of carrying explosives had been stopped. Amid heavy visitors, the officer reached the placement on a motorcycle. Whereas she was searching for the truck, “Capt Razzaq Baloch requested me to maneuver away. He was martyred attempting to defuse the bomb. He was a courageous officer of the bomb disposal squad,” she remembers.
Remembering the goal killing try she survived, SHO Khanum says that her driver knowledgeable the police headquarters after which drove to the BMC, the place he acquired remedy. “It’s not straightforward to danger one’s life, however I goal to do my job properly,” says the resilient SHO.
“I had the chance to labored with former DIG Hamid Shakil in lots of operations. We as soon as carried out a raid the place we discovered a person hiding below the mattress and seized an enormous cache of weapons from the place,” she says.
Sobia Khanum believes that the ladies of Balochistan are competent and able to working in all fields. All they want is extra alternatives. “I urge extra girls to affix new fields, work for themselves and the welfare of the province and the nation.”
The author is a journalist based mostly in Quetta
