KARACHI: While the city has yet to see any improvement in the law and order situation, the Sindh government on Wednesday once again gave an extension to the Rangers policing powers, which have been extended every three months since January 2010.
Better trained, equipped and having fewer duty hours than police’s, the paramilitary force has yet to prove that they are making up for the lost ground by the regular police.
A notification issued by the home department stated that the Sindh government gave a further three-month extension in the powers of the Rangers under Section 5 of the Anti-Terrorists Act, 1997.
It was in January 2010 when the Rangers were first given the authority to arrest and detain suspects for up to 90 days in the wake of continued targeted killings in the city. The move was then opposed by some legislators.
“It sounds ridiculous to bring the Rangers on a par with the local police to maintain peace and establish law and order,” Senator Talha Mahmood, the chairman of the senate’s standing committee on interior, had said.
Despite the reservations many quarters had over the move, the Sindh government went ahead with its decision to extend the period of policing powers awarded to the Rangers several times.
However, unlike the previous practice of yearly extension of Rangers’ stay in the province, the government now notifies the policing powers extension every three months.
While the highest number of killings was reported in 1995 when 1,742 people were gunned down in different parts of the metropolis, only last year 1,339 people were killed in the city. Still the figure was higher than the number of killings carried out in the city in 2009 as 801 people were murdered then.
Rangers claim arrests A spokesman for the Pakistan Rangers, Sindh, Major Bilal, told Dawn that they did have carried out arrests in connection with targeted killings in the city though he said he didn’t have figures with him to support his claim.
“Since we hand over these suspects to police next day, I don’t have any data with me right now,” the major said.
Analysts said that even if the Rangers had achieved some success in arresting those involved in targeted killings in the city, they did not make it public.
There are reports that the Rangers had actually picked up Ajmal Pahari, the notorious suspect said to be involved in more than 100 targeted killings, but they had not owned the achievement. It is worth noting that his arrest was claimed by the CID police.
Stay in the city Strangely enough, even in the early 2006 and 2007 when the city was relatively peaceful the Sindh government had asked the centre for permanent deployment of the paramilitary force in Karachi.
For the relocation of the Rangers’ offices sprout over the years across the city, the Sindh government had some time back allotted several acres to the paramilitary force along the Superhighway near Toll Plaza.
But, the priced property, Jinnah Courts, where the Rangers are headquartered, has now almost become a place of their permanent stay since their arrival there over two decades back.
The analysts say that while the Rangers were brought in as a stopgap arrangement, they had occupied sizable chunks of the city’s prized real estate essentially belonging to the education department and the city government.
Police resources Senior police officials requesting anonymity told Dawn that it was a widely held view in the police department that the provincial government should divert the resources being spent on the Rangers to the police force.
They said that the Rangers were averse to the idea of returning from Karachi that the police officials, who advocated their return, earned the opprobrium of the establishment.
However, it also needs to be acknowledged that policing powers were awarded to the Rangers when the police force had failed to play its due role in going after those involved in targeted killings and restore the law and order situation of the city.
It is worth noting that before the award of policing powers, the Rangers duties were limited such as securing VIPs enclosure at the National Stadium during cricket matches or escorting high-ranking officials like home minister and city nazim.
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