Minister of State for Narcotics Control Shehryar Afridi recently claimed that the Anti-Narcotics Force (ANF) has achieved a prosecution rate of nearly 98 per cent. He added that this is the highest conviction rate in drug-related crimes in the world.
Afridi claimed that these statistics were presented in a report issued by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
“The ANF has a conviction rate of 97 per cent making Pakistan the country with the highest conviction rate in drug-related crimes in the world,” the minister told reporters on October 6 adding, “It’s not Prime Minister Imran Khan or Federal Minister Shehryar Afridi who’s saying this, but the UNODC which has released these figures.”
However, no such report has been released by the UNODC.
The last time UNODC reported of drug-related crimes in Pakistan was back in 2008 when a report titled ‘The illicit Drug Trade in Pakistan’ was released. The report lauded ANF’s efforts for prosecution in drug-related cases and stated that the conviction rate in such cases stood at ‘eight per cent in 2006.’
The report also stated that ANF itself “collects and publishes annual statistics on drug-related crimes,” while the UNODC does not collect such information.
The ANF’s internal figures which are available on its website do not boast of the high conviction rate reported by Afridi.
