KARACHI: The Sindh High Court has issued a show-cause notice to the provincial police officer for not complying with its order about developing a mechanism to maintain a criminal record of accused persons.

Earlier, the SHC had directed the inspector general of Sindh police to develop a system in collaboration with the prisons IG to keep the record of all the criminals across the province and sought a compliance report within a month. The court warned that it would initiate contempt of court proceedings in case of failure.

The single bench of the SHC headed by Justice Salahuddin Panhwar issued a show-cause notice to the IG saying why contempt proceedings should not be initiated against him over non-compliance of the court’s orders.

SHC calls for including CNIC numbers of accused in charge sheets

The bench also directed the provincial police officer and the prisons IG to make positive efforts in introducing a method by using latest technologies in collaboration with the National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra) for the verification of identity of the accused and criminals.

It further observed that such a mechanism could not be developed without the computerised national identity card (CNIC) number, therefore, the IG must issue directions to all the investigating officers to mention the CNIC numbers of the accused persons in the charge sheets or investigation reports as required under Section 173 of the Criminal Procedure Code.

The bench issued these directions during the hearing of a bail application of a suspect when the official in-charge of the criminal record office (CRO) said that there was no case against the applicant while as per the order of the trial court nine cases were pending against him.

The CRO in-charge further said that they had criminal record of the Karachi range only while a deputy prosecutor general said that the CNIC numbers of the accused were not mentioned in the record available with the CRO and the IOs had not been mentioning the same in the charge sheets.

The bench said that faces may fade by lapse of time but not the identity (CNIC number), therefore, where identity (name and parentage) of the accused was not under any cloud (requiring no identification by witnesses) then the IO must make efforts to indentify (CNIC number) the accused.

Published in Dawn, October 16th, 2018