FAISALABAD: A special committee of senior officers has been formed to reopen the untraced cases, arrest fugitives, determine the role of the policemen in faulty investigations and finalise the investigation reports of the Parco oil theft cases registered since 2015.

The committee will recommend action against the policemen who will be found involved in faulty investigations and patronage of the criminals.

As many as 113 cases of Parco oil theft have been registered since 2015 and challans of 39 cases been completed and 41 are still incomplete. Similarly, 485 accused have been named in the cases and of them, 285 were arrested and others are still at large.

The city police officer, Suhail Chaudhary, heads the committee and SSP (operations), SSP (investigation), SP (Legal) and SP/DSP concerned will be its members. The committee head has also been authorised to co-opt any officer from Faisalabad region or call any relevant case file of other districts of the region.

Regional Police Officer Raja Riffat Mukhtar formed this board which will complete its working within two weeks. He said a dispassionate analysis of last five years’ cases relating to Parco oil theft shows substandard investigation, non-arrest of accused having connivance of the police officials, which is encouraging factor for the criminal gangs. At the same time police officials have not been taken to task due to improper inquiries/disciplinary proceedings, as a result of which unscrupulous elements and black sheep in the garb of police uniform indulged in their nefarious designs, reads the order.

“In order to ensure fair and transparent investigations against accused as well as merit based departmental inquiries against police officials and subsequent disciplinary action, the undersigned deemed it necessary to constitute a special committee for evaluation of the challan cases, complete the pending investigation by arresting all accused and determine the role/conduct of police officials by way of formal enquiries in accordance with law,” the RPO noted in the order.

The terms of references of the committee include findings of the challaned cases will be evaluated minutely and in case of faulty investigation due process for change of investigation can be adopted to have a fair conclusion in next investigation, pending investigation cases must be finalised expeditiously, incomplete challans will be considered as pending investigation and complete challans be submitted by arresting all involved accused, investigation of all untraced cases will be re-opened immediately and be finalised, accordingly, arrest of all accused, legal action against facilitators, patronisers, and subsequent strict action in accordance with the law and role and conduct of police officers/officials found responsible for faulty investigations, connivance and corrupt practices be specified and further action will be taken by way of regular enquiry.

A police officer said that working on the issue would be started soon as we had been doing homework so that we could leave no stone unturned to fix the responsible persons and the guilty policemen as well. He said formation of the committee would help determine the role of the policeman who had been supporting the oil thieves rather than stemming the trend. He said it was a matter of grave concern that the oil theft cases remained untraced and some of the investigations were pending.

Published in Dawn, July 18th, 2020