Dhurandhar’s real-life Chaudhry Aslam faced suspensions, constant threats, says protege: ‘He took out a glock, put it on…’

In a recent conversation with Digi Tales, writer and Deputy Inspector General of Sindh Police Omar Shahid Hamid spoke at length about his mentor, Chaudhry Aslam, with whom he worked closely on high-profile cases. Hamid recounted his first encounter with the legendary officer, describing it as something straight out of a crime-action film: “The thing about Aslam and why I think he kind of makes good copy, even in terms of cinematic viewing and all, is that he was always larger than life. And my first sort of meeting with him was that he showed up in his white shalwar kameez, took out a glock, put it on the table, and started narrating the story of how he had arrested my father’s assassin.” Hamid also explained why Chaudhry Aslam became such an infamous figure in Pakistan:

“Aslam at heart was a crime fighter. I know there has been a lot of debate about him, about his tactics, about whether he was a good cop or a bad cop, and I’m not defending any of that. But I will say this: for a police officer to take on, one after another, and often at the same time, the biggest menaces to law and order and criminality in the 1990s, which was the MQM’s (Muttahida Qaumi Movement) militant arm at the time, and then, in the early 2000s, the Lyari gang wars, the various characters within Lyari like Rehman Dakait or Arshad Pappu, and to not side with one or the other, as many police officers have done, but to take on all sides simultaneously, to fight a multi-front war. And then later, in the 2010s, right up to his death, to take on the jihadists, whether it was Lashkar-e-Jhangvi or the Pakistani Taliban, to open so many fronts simply because the state said, ‘Look, you’ve got to fight these guys, there’s no one else to do it.’ To take on that burden, I know many, many police officers who backed off.”

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He added that Aslam had no partisanship, viewing crime and criminals through a single, uncompromising lens: “I know a lot of police officers who were like, ‘If we worked against the jihadists, we won’t work against the MQM or against the Lyari gang war, because we can’t afford to make that many enemies.’ But he never questioned that fundamental principle, because he believed that was the only way to bring peace or security to the citizens of the city. He had this unerring belief that these guys are breaking the law.” Hamid acknowledged that some of Aslam’s methods were extreme, but argued they were shaped by extraordinary circumstances:

“He took on all those multiple fronts, which were special. When you are living day to day under that sort of pressure, sometimes the government tells you that you have to clean Lyari, make it crime-free, and you are thrust into that role, and then eight or nine months later, the government changes, you are suspended, they lodge FIRs against you because it’s a different government, and the people who are around you are targeted systematically.” He added: “Your personal life is extremely curtailed because of these crazy security circumstances. In Aslam’s case, his house was blown up before he was killed, and it was just pure luck that his family, and he, survived. So, for someone whose own circumstances were like that, it’s not a normal life. And again, I will give him that extra bit of leeway because the other characters who were around him profited a lot from these kinds of situations and became billionaires. So if you compare Aslam with a lot of those people, having said that he was not an angel either, he always remained within some sort of framework of the organization itself.”

Sanjay Dutt on the sets of Dhurandhar with director Aditya Dhar.

Chaudhry Aslam was killed in a bomb blast carried out by the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in 2014. Recently, appearing on a podcast by Dialogue Pakistan, Aslam’s widow, Noreen, recalled her husband’s admiration for Sanjay Dutt, a fan since he watched Khalnayak in the 1990s. She expressed confidence that Sanjay would do justice to Aslam’s character, but also voiced a complaint about the film:

“The trailer of the film has a character describe Aslam as the offspring of the devil and a djinn. We are Muslims, and such words are disrespectful not only to Aslam but his mother, who was a simple, honest woman. If I see my husband being portrayed wrongly or any propaganda against him in the film, I will definitely take all the legal steps I can. It is strange that Indian filmmakers find no other subjects but to malign Pakistan.”