The Punjab government has effectively accelerated the implementation on National Action Plan (NAP) with an objective to eliminate terrorists, their facilitators, besides ensuring remarkable decrease in crime rate.
According to statistics issued by the IGP office, a significant decrease was observed in crime rate during 2015 as compared to the previous year 2014 while murder cases decreased to 27 percent during this period.
Punjab government Spokesman Zaeem Qadri Tuesday said the political leadership of country was convinced on a single point that until and unless the scourge of terrorism was eliminated, the country could not make commendable progress.
He said, “The NAP envisaged to purge Pakistan from fissiparous forces engaged in weakening roots of the state has yielded desired positive results.”
He said the PML-N government under the leadership of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, through a well-designed NAP, had tightened the noose around terrorists and their facilitators and the situation was under control now.
The spokesman said the prime minister held day and night meetings with the stakeholders and made peace in the country possible. “People have taken sigh of relief and life has returned to normalcy in strife-torn Karachi following strict implementation of National Action Plan,” Zaeem added.
He said that Chief Minister Shehbaz Sharif has put in place all effective measures for mobilising all resources to make National Action Plan a complete success. “Owing to stern implementation of the plan, rate of terrorist activities in Punjab is the lowest,” he added.
Quoting figures, the spokesman said, Punjab police and other law enforcement agencies during search operations and crackdowns conducted in various parts of the province had rounded up as many as 33,000 persons with dubious activities and huge quantity of arms and ammunition were recovered.
The Punjab police, under the National Action Plan (NAP) conducted 33,772 search operations during 10 months in which 994,118 people were investigated whereas cases had been registered against 980 people on violation of Foreign Act.
However, the police had also arrested more than 40 terrorists and kept 69 outlaws under custody during this period. As many as 6,162 general hold-ups were organised in which 24,436 suspects had been arrested whereas 122,800 vehicles were impounded over tinted glasses and inappropriate number plates.
On the violation of NAP Act regarding renting houses, 7,328 cases had been registered, and 11,036 people had also been arrested while 1,754 were convicted by the courts. Similarly, 2,851 cases on display of weapons and 2,611 cases of having illicit weapons had been registered.
On publication of hatred material, 547 cases were registered and 580 people were arrested while 35 of them were sentenced by the courts.
As a result of implementation of NAP, murder cases have been minimized to 3,844 from 5,282, crime against person cases diminished to 43,437 as compared to year 2014 in which 48,759 cases were reported.
Abduction for ransom cases reduced to 71 from 91, dacoity incidents minimised to 1,286 from 1,950 in 2014 and the other crimes have also been considerably decreased due to the effective implementation of NAP in Punjab.
Under the National Action Plan, more than 425,000 arms of different categories have been computerized in Punjab and the drive is still in progress in collaboration with the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) to get all the arms registered.
According to the official sources, after the expiry of deadline, the government will launch a crackdown against illegal weapons across Punjab and violators will have to face punishments and fine according to the relevant laws.
This initiative by the government will not only bring the weapons on record of the government agencies concerned but also discourage the crimes through illegal arms.
Provincial Law Minister Rana Sanaullah said that law enforcement agencies had completed search operations in hostels and universities, following a “zero-tolerance policy” against terrorism.