RAWALPINDI: Expressing concern over ‘objections’ raised on challans of cases registered under Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA), the city police officer (CPO) has decided to hold a meeting with the district public prosecutor and all police officials concerned.

According to sources, the CPO has intimated SPs, SDPOs and SHOs that police officers investigating the cases related to ATA had not been completing the challans and removing the objections.

Due to negligence of IOs, many cases related to ATA were still lying pending; therefore, the CPO has called a meeting to discuss the issues and remove the objections in the cases, said the sources.

Besides SPs, the district public prosecutor, DSP legal Inayatullah, DSP Cantt Mirza Javaid Iqbal and investigating officers of different police stations have been called to explain the reasons behind delays of submission of challans of ATA cases and objections raised in it.

About a week ago, Regional Police Officer Babar Sarfraz Alpa had directed the CPO Rawalpindi and district police officers of Attock and Jhelum to submit reasons for delay of challans of terror cases.

A review of the reports sent to the RPO revealed that the reasons mentioned for the delay in the submission of the reports were unsatisfactory, as most of these reasons were related to the non-submission of a complete challan.

A court had directed the police for submission of a report explaining the reasons for the delay, regardless of whether it pertained to a complete or incomplete challan.

The RPO directed the district police chiefs of the three districts to look into the matter and provide a report detailing the reasons for the delay in the submission of the report under section 173 of CrPC as specified in the per forma.

Since the matter was related to the ATC, therefore, it should be taken on highest priority, the RPO directed.

Earlier, the RPO had expressed concern over non-submission of a large number of reports to courts despite the fact that considerable time had elapsed between the FIRs and the submission of challans.

According to the law, after the registration of an FIR and recording the statements of witnesses, the concerned investigating officer is bound to submit a complete or incomplete report within a specific time.

The RPO had directed the police officials to submit a complete list of pending challans within a week.

An ATC judge had earlier warned that any default on part of the police in non-submission of the report shall be deemed to be willful disobedience rendering it to be punishment under contempt of court.

District and Sessions Judge, Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) No 1, Rawalpindi had sought attention of the RPO, CTO and DPOs of Attock, Jhelum, Chakwal and Murree towards “Non-submission of challans” of cases registered under the terrorism act.

Following the ATC judge’s intimation on Oct 23, the RPO also sought the reasons from SSP Investigation Saba Sattar and the DSP legal for non-submission of challans and directed them to furnish a report.

The RPO sought the details of the cases registered/discharged/untraceable from the year 2020 to 2024, including the reasons for not submitting the challans.

Published in Dawn, November 18th, 2024