Action against bad cops imminent, warns police chief

Karachi
Karachi’s new police chief, Mushtaq Ahmed Mehar, confirmed on Friday the presence of black sheep in the police department, and said action was imminent against police officers having a tainted reputation.
The additional inspector general of police said his subordinates were finalising a list of police officials, including station house officers, against whom complaints were being received.
He was giving his first media briefing at the Anti-Car Lifting Cell (ACLC) office after replacing Ghulam Qadir Thebo as the city’s top police officer.
Mehar said the Karachi operation was continuing and needed an added impetus, for which he already held a meeting with senior police officials, including the deputy inspectors general (DIGs).
On a query, he emphasised the need for upgrading the investigation department, saying that when a suspect was arrested he got advantage of a poor investigation and a delay in the filing of the charge sheet. Efforts were under way to upgrade the investigation department so that the suspect was prosecuted in the court of law at the earliest, he added.
10 gangs busted
Mehar announced that during raids carried out in various parts of the city, the ACLC had busted 10 major gangs of vehicle lifters and recovered cars and motorcycles from them.
He said the ACLC had busted four gangs of car lifters and six gangs of motorcycle lifters, and recovered 32 cars and 34 motorcycles which had been either snatched or stolen in different parts of the metropolis.
Mehar said action was being taken to curb street crimes, including vehicle theft and snatching, and the ACLC had conducted a series of successful raids against such gangs over the past few days. He said the police were focusing on controlling cellphone-snatching incidents and had finalised a plan under which high-powered CCTV cameras would be installed.
Moreover, he said, directives had been issued to the station house officers to conduct random checking at points where most of the complaints of street crime were reported.
Strict directives had also been issued to the senior superintendent of police (SSPs) of the districts of Karachi to immediately close all vice dens in their jurisdictions by making their arrests in a week and submit a certificate to him showing their areas had been cleared. He warned the officers of action if any vice den was found running after the deadline.
After the media briefing, the additional IGP handed over the keys of the recovered vehicles to their owners.
SSP Irfan Ali Bahadur of the ACLC Sindh said that when he had taken charge of the cell, incidents of vehicle theft had been on the rise while many small checkpoints on the highways were not functional, and as a first step he had immediately revived the old checkpoints of the ACLC on the entry and exit points to the city.
He added that there were about 36 exist points in Karachi from where criminals carried snatched or stolen vehicles to upcountry. Currently, he said, ACLC officials were stationed at five routes and they conducted random checking there, but still there was a need to make all exit points functional. He said his department was facing a shortage of manpower.