recent report threatens to expose the inefficiency of the city police in compiling criminals’ records.

The story goes that, a lay citizen, named Babar Nazir, went to a mobile phone shop to purchase a cellular phone. The shopkeeper asked for his CNIC. When Nazir presented it to him, he was horrified to learn that he had featured in Punjab Police’s Criminal Record Management System (as a proclaimed offender, with 33-odd cases registered against him. The shopkeeper told him that the cases had been lodged with the Sundar police.

“At first, I didn’t believe what I’d just heard,” says Nazir. “I had never committed a crime in my entire life, so how could this be possible?” The shopkeeper then shared a screenshot of the data available online. Quite understandably, he refused to carry out any transaction with Nazir, and directed him to the concerned police station.

Nazir says the incident left him in a shock. He landed in a hospital. Later, “I was so scared that for many days I wouldn’t step out of my house. My family was also in a state of shock. They dreaded that the police would come for me any time.”

Gathering his wits about him, Nazir finally approached a lawyer who had special access to the actual data of criminals compiled by Lahore police. After some investigation, it was discovered that the criminal record was originally about one Babar Ali. “Neither my picture nor my biometrics match with those of the accused [Babar Ali],” Nazir recalls. “Then how come our identities were mixed up?”

Next, Nazir contacted the office of the CCPO where he was told that fixing the data could take a good deal of time.

It’s a pity that the CRMS, also dubbed as CRO, carrying records of almost 1.5 million criminals, should become questionable, all thanks to the inefficiency of the officials involved. After all, the data is archived tirelessly over years and at a cost of huge amounts of money from the national exchequer.

It’s a pity that the CRMS, also dubbed as CRO, carrying records of almost 1.5 million criminals, should suddenly become questionable. After all, the data is archived tirelessly over many years and costs huge amounts of money from the national exchequer.

n officer of Punjab Police’s CRO Branch tells TNS on condition of anonymity that the investigation officers (IOs) in the provincial police are responsible for the corruption of important data about the criminals.

Elaborating his point, he says that a policy introduced in the past mandates that a case challan, or Polcom, must not be submitted in the court unless a copy of the CNIC of the accused is provided and their biometrics and photograph are recorded. However, in many cases, the accused either doesn’t have a CNIC or fails to provide it.

“The IOs’ modus operandi is very simple,” says the officer. “They look for the CNIC of the person whose first name and surname match with those of the accused. The IOs get such CNICs either from their own records or those of the NADRA that are available with the Police Department.”

SP Aftab Phularwan admits that similar cases have emerged in the past. However, he says, “we have devised an effective policy to deal with them. A cell headed by a DSP at CCPO’s office has been formed to look into the matter and deal compassionately with the citizens in distress.”

He says that whenever such a case is noticed, the police launch a thorough investigation. If the complaint is found to be genuine, remedial measures are taken.

The writer is a print and broadcast journalist