While fixing responsibility for the persisting poor law and order in the violence-hit metropolis, the police tend to point a finger at the judiciary which, a spokesman of Karachi police Friday said, needs to increase the number of convictions to create deterrence against crime.
Also, the city police, that lifted 27 corpses of the law enforcers targeted by unknown killers during the month of January alone, chided some media “friends” who, the spokesman claimed, were less serious in showing real picture to the civilians of this “unfortunate city”.
In a briefing-cum-rebuttal, Karachi police spokesman Inspector Atiq Ahmad Shaikh told reporters that from September 5 to Jan 27 the law enforcement agencies were able to arrest some 13,895 “suspects” involved in heinous crimes like murder, target killing, kidnapping, robbery and extortion.
Of these thousands arrested some 8,267 are in jail, at least 4,972 have been bailed out and 562 are under police custody. According to the figures, which Atiq said came from the office of City Police Chief Shahid Hayat Khan, during the past five months the courts were able to complete only 94 trials that saw the accused acquitted. “The rate of prosecution and conviction is really of a grave concern for us,” the spokesman told a questioner.
Inspector Shaikh urged the need for more and more convictions. “We need to increase the number of convictions. The criminals must go to jail. Only this would deter them against crime,” he viewed.
Reiterating that the nature of violence in the city was politically-motivated and political parties were covertly fostering “militant wings”, the spokesman conceded that “years’ of mess” could not be humanly cleaned in a few months.
He, however, said given the numbers available the crime rate had shrunk in the crime-infested city by 40 to 50 percent since Sep 5, the commencement date for the so-called Karachi Operation. “Still there are plenty of areas where improvement is required. We are on it and would fix the situation soon,” Atiq vowed.
The police spokesman also came hard on a section of media which, he claimed, had not realised the full intensity in which Karachi operation was enduring. “Most of the time we hear the bad news only,” he complained.
The police whereas seem to have little or no tolerance to have media’s feedback, the data Atiq provided to reporters Friday depict that the law and order situation in this country’s financial hub was far from satisfactory.
Well illustrated to this effect are incidents of politically-motivated targeted killings that, the police figures show, saw an astronomical increase of 126 percent during the period under review. Against 13 people assassinated by armed attackers in September last year the just-concluded month of January witnessed 43 such killings.
“January was the worst for us as during the month we saw 27 law enforcers martyred,” said the cop who believes that the criminals and terrorists, feeling cordoned off, were retaliating against the state.
Other heads that depict improvement during the said months include incidents of extortion recorded at 8 against 120, murders 09 against 137, kidnapping for ransom 02 against 15, bank robberies and dacoities 90 against 118 and cell phone related crime that dipped to zero in January from 2865 in September.
Declaring the police as “under privileged, underfunded and deprived government organization”, the spokesman said the law enforcers despite all the odds were “working harder than ever”. To contain crime in the city, he said the police authorities were employing different strategies ranging from increasing presence of police and Rangers check posts in sensitive neighborhoods to intelligence sharing between various law enforcement agencies.
