Punjab gets new police chief

1
398

LAHORE: The government has removed Amjad Javed Saleemi as the Inspector General of Punjab Police (IGP), replacing him with Captain (r) Arif Nawaz Khan.

According to a notification, “Amjad Javed Saleemi, a BS-22 officer of Police Service of Pakistan, presently serving as Provincial Police officer (PPO), the government of Punjab is transferred and directed to report to Establishment Division with immediate effect and until further order.”

Arif Nawaz Khan has worked on the same position before. He was removed from the post before the last general elections. He was presently serving as secretary Narcotics Control Division.

Born in 1961, he joined the Police Service of Pakistan as ASP in 1986. He was promoted to the post of SSP in 2000, DIG in 2009 and Additional IG in 2014. During this period, he served on important posts in Bahawalpur, Faisalabad, Special Branch, VVIP Security, DIG Training Punjab, Balochistan and Central Police Office Punjab Lahore.

According to informed sources, Amjad Javed Saleemi had drawn the government’s ire after he allegedly thwarted National Accountability Bureau (NAB) efforts to arrest Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader Hamza Shehbaz.

Sources further added that in January, the PM had directed Punjab Chief Minister Usman Buzdar to remove Saleemi for ‘mishandling’ the Sahiwal incident.

Earlier in October, the federal government had removed Punjab IG Mohammad Tahir Khan. In ‘protest’, the head of the Punjab Commission for Police Reforms, Nasir Khan Durrani also stepped down.

1 COMMENT

Comments are closed.