With the advent of the caretaker government and the elections around the corner, the provincial capital has seen a significant drop in crimes. It was Martin Luther King who once said, “Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can’t ride you unless your back is bent.” It remains a mystery as to what extent the interim government has ‘straightened its back’ against criminals although the change is visible.
In a bid to ensure transparent elections, the interim government has shuffled government officials all over. The Election Commission of Pakistan has almost completed its pre-poll obligations, while the candidates who have escaped the ‘wrath’ of the Commission are beginning to get their election campaigns rolling. While the city is busy preparing for elections, one may wonder where the city’s criminals have gone!
A city which regularly witnessed several cases of robberies, murders, theft and other street crimes now mysteriously looks relatively peaceful. As many as 30 to 35 robberies used to get registered in the city’s police stations before the shuffling of the police officials in the province. Surprisingly, this number has recently dropped to half.
The number of deaths resulting from police encounters has also plummeted surprisingly. Has the police tightened the noose around the criminals’ necks or is it some other reason that has curbed crimes in the city, citizens wonder.
“Yes, there has been a noticeable decrease in crimes in the city. I haven’t read much about people getting robbed or mugged on streets in the newspapers otherwise the situation was quite different two months ago,” said Muhammad Umar, a local businessman.
Jamal Sheikh, another citizen who runs a jewelry shop in Liberty, said the decrease in crimes could not be attributed to the police efficiency. “Our police is the same. There may be some honest officials but it would be naïve to say that the current police setup in the city is corruption-free. In my opinion, the decrease in crimes is mainly because the criminals are too busy running the election campaigns of their political bosses,” he said.
Rida Shah, a Masters student at a local university, voiced similar opinion.
“Criminals rob people because they need money. Everyone knows that when elections approach, our politicians open their coffers for criminals because they need them for arm-twisting their rivals and coercing people to vote for them. So when money is flowing freely, why should one put his life at risk?”
POLITICAL PATRONAGE
Sources in the city’s police department told Pakistan Today that the drop in crimes in the city is attributable with the farewell of some former MPAs and MNAs who used to patronize criminals.
An official from the police department said that in the past, they had to let go of criminals on the ‘request of influential people to save their jobs’. Now when the ‘former bosses’ have become ‘powerless’ and are busy is ‘reclaiming their authority’ through the upcoming elections, the policemen are free to perform their duty ‘honestly’, the official told Pakistan Today.
The official added that the police department could work better in the absence of corrupt political high-ups. “The number of crimes in the city has not reduced to zero, but we have been able to curb a lot of crimes,” he said.
The criminals have also started to think twice before committing a crime as they now know that the political high-ups who used to back them are not in power anymore, said an official from the Police Special Branch, the provincial intelligence agency of the Punjab government.
Making a tall claim, he said that if the policemen were given a free hand to crack down on criminals they could completely eradicate all kinds of crime from the city within a month.
Sources told Pakistan Today that it was not only the ‘pressure from above’ that hampered the performance of the police but the appointment of ‘corrupt and inefficient’ officials in the department had also shortened the long arm of the law.
Punjab IGP Aftab Sultan’s spokesperson Nabeela Ghazanfar told Pakistan Today that on-merit appointment of officials on various posts in the police department had resulted in a decrease in crimes in the city.
On-merit appointments of police officers and the dip in crime rate leaves one wondering…were all appointments made by the previous governments and the police department on-merit?