Car snatching and lifting on the rise

Seventy-five percent more cases of motor-vehicle snatching were reported in January as 1,069 FIRs were filed as compared to 609 in December 2012.
Motor vehicle lifting cases also went up 6 percent – 1,501 cases in January while 1,411 were filed the month before, says a Free and Fair Election (FAFEN) report released on Monday.
FAFEN governance monitors visited 101 district police officers (DPO) across Pakistan and reported a slight increase of 1 percent in the registered FIRs which went up from 39,929 in December to 40,449 this month. Punjab with 59 percent of the total FIRs was the highest reporting region followed by KP (24 percent), Sindh (15 percent), Balochistan (1 percent) and ICT (0.5 percent).
For other crimes pertaining to property, a three times increase in the number of extortion cases (29) was observed as only eight such FIRs were filed in December 2012. As many as 3,650 theft cases, 1,474 robbery and dacoity and 721 criminal trespass cases were also reported.
The total cases for crimes against women were 883 almost 5 percent more than the 840 cases filed during December. The highest increase was reported for cases of insult to modesty as 42 cases were reported in January compared to eight cases in the preceding month. FIRs of forced marriages (359), attack on modesty (220), rape (159) and offences relating to marriage (72) were also filed. On a positive note, cases of offences relating to marriage reported 35% drop this month compared to 110 in December.
Furthermore, 31 FIRs of honour killings were filed – an increase from 27 cases registered last month.
Cases for crimes involving physical harm were 3,505. Of these, most cases were of hurt (1,306) followed by murder (950) and attempted murder (877). Murder cases reported an increase of 9 percent compared to last month’s 871 cases. However, hurt and attempted murder reported a drop of 17 percent and 2 percent respectively.
Registered cases of threat and fraud crimes were 2,883 of which the highest were filed for counterfeiting currency notes (1,541). Five hundred and four cases were of cheating and 496 of criminal breach of trust. Cases of offences against public tranquility reported a major increase in FIRs they increased from 56 to 130 from December to January this year.
Of the monitored districts, seven out of 10 reporting the most crimes were in Punjab, two were in KP and one in Sindh. The most cases were filed in Lahore (5,037), Peshawar (2,427) and Faisalabad (2,265).