To make the capital a “crime-free” city remains a daydream of Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, as over hundreds of cases have been registered in the capital’s police stations every week. However, most of the cases remain unsolved due to certain reasons, it emerged on Saturday.
According to official data available with Pakistan Today, every week the police registered 24 cases related to various crimes in contradiction with the crime diary which exposed that almost 100 cases are registered every week.
The crime remains a challenge for the police who have set up massive pickets around every intersection of the city along with motorbikes, cars for surprise snap-checking; in addition to round-the-clock monitoring through hundreds of security cameras under the Safe City Project, the police registered 2493 cases in 2015-16.
According to the data shared by Islamabad Police, in 2015 alone, the police registered 1407 cases including 115 murder, 7 abduction, 33 robbery, 328 street crimes, 300 burglaries, 369 cars theft, and 255 motorbikes thefts.
However, in 2016, with the decline of 22 per cent in crime rate (which has registered), the local police registered 1086 cases included 96 murder, 1 abduction, 17 robbery, 282 street crimes, 259 burglary, 252 cars theft, 179 motorbikes theft, respectively.
According to the sources, the police failed to nab the criminals involved in 65 plus cases of murder.
Where thousands of proclaimed offenders, absconders are moving freely in the capital, the Islamabad police have been successful in detaining 4243 criminals in 2016.
The criminals were involved in robberies, street crimes and vehicle lifters. The criminals included 97 gang members, 123 burglaries, 67 vehicle thieves, 3178 proclaimed offenders, and 778 absconders.
Following the new layer of terrorism, the police along with other security agencies have conducted 270 search operations in 2016 alone.
During the search operations, the police failed to capture any bounty and high-profile criminals who were involved in several heinous crimes and also in terror attacks.
Besides this, 79 Ak-47 Kalashnikovs, 65 rifles, 640 pistols, and 11040 rounds of bullets were recovered in 2016 from 762 people while searching with most of them have not licenses.
It is noted that 237 kg marijuana, 36 kg heroin, 2 kg opium, 55333 bottles of liquor were also recovered from 668 criminals in one year. The police also recovered 316 stolen cars and 110 motorbikes from the steelers.
A police official, requesting anonymity, said that in 2015 and 2016, around 3,000 to 4,000 FIRs were registered excluding the hundreds of cases which were not registered by the police, in order to maintain the figure around thousand per year. Repeated attempts were made to call SSP Operations SajidKiyani but he was not available for comments.