KARACHI: Amid growing pressure on the Sindh government and serious criticism on performance of Karachi police, the provincial government has decided to energise its efforts to contain street crime in Karachi, it emerged on Wednesday.

Under a new strategy surveillance of more than 10,000 suspects with criminal history, establishment of crime matrix to check daily performance of the police personnel and taking onboard competent lawyers for prosecution of over 1,800 cases of heinous crimes, ranging from robbery to murder and rape, will be ensured.

City police chief Ghulam Nabi Memon sharing contours of the strategy said that there was a large number of ‘re-offenders or habitual criminals’ against whom e-tagging through court had been proposed in forthcoming legislation.

He pointed out that this practice was under way in the United States and Europe and there were estimated to be over 200,000 criminals in the US, who were under surveillance by law enforcers through e-tagging.

City police chief shares contours of new strategy to tackle street crime

Through this technology not only locations of crimes would be traced, but the bail of such offenders would be cancelled and heavy fines would be imposed on them in case of an offence.

The e-tagging strategy would also help overcome the issue of overcrowding in jails, he added.

An accused could go out of jail through court under certain rules, he said.

Once released on bail, such repeat offenders will be under surveillance of law enforcers, their lifestyle will be checked and information would be collected from notables of their area about their character.

He recalled that a total of 11,211 suspects/accused allegedly involved in street crime had been arrested over the past five years. Out of them, 3,700 were still in prisons while others were on bail or had been acquitted.

“Surveillance of such elements will be carried out and action would be taken against them if they are found involved in any criminal activity.”

The police chief added around 50 per cent acquittal of criminals by courts was the result of delay in registration of FIRs or false cases against them.

The SHOs have strictly been directed to get FIRs registered at the earliest and present the charge sheets (challan) in ‘original cases’ only as it will help prevent bail to the accused and lead to their conviction, he said.

Crime matrix

“We have ended the practice of giving show-cause notices to SHOs in case of rise in crimes in their jurisdiction,” said the city police chief.

He said a ‘crime matrix’ had been established at his office under which, performance of SHOs and their senior officers would be assessed on daily basis.

“Action will be taken against SHOs if they failed to obtain CCTV footage of the crime scene, identify suspects and ensure their arrests,” declared the Additional IG Karachi.

“If SHOs and their senior officers up to the DIG level failed in these three spheres, explanation letter and show-cause notice will be issued to them and they would be removed if they fail to give satisfactory reply within three months.”

Mr Memon claimed that this process of accountability would apply on him as well.

Conviction

The city police chief revealed that there were estimated to be 1,823 cases of 10 serious categories of crimes, including robbery-cum-murder, house-robbery-cum-rape, etc and the Sindh government had decided to appoint a panel of lawyers from legal fraternity at handsome fee to pursue these high-profile cases in courts to ensure their conviction.

Apart from these measures, patrolling has also been enhanced as policemen from different units have been deployed in the metropolis to tackle street crimes, he concluded.

Published in Dawn, February 24th, 2022