LAHORE – The Chief Minister’s Secretariat must recommend the name of the Capital City Police Officer (CCPO), DIG Amjad Javed Saleemi, to the Guinness Book of World Records for confiscating more than 20,000 motorcycles just in two weeks here in Lahore.
The category for the nomination should be “corruption-riddled policing” or typical form of “Thana Culture” rather than impounding of great number of vehicles in a short span of time without prior warning. Seriously, the police have done it even without launching any awareness campaign to sensitize the general public in the town.
Only because of the novel idea, floated by the CCPO, the police are filling their pockets at hundreds of pickets and more than 100 police stations in the city, these days.
Had the Punjab government appointed this DIG on the post of Additional-IG last year, the city police would have been included in the book when a series of world records were set in Pakistan during the annual Punjab Youth and Sport Festival in Lahore. However, the government can make a special request to the international organizers to against visit Lahore to see the true picture of Thana culture.
The police stations are packed the victims, including mothers and grandparents, who are running from pillar to post to get the two-wheelers of their children back from the police.
What to say about the office-goers who were deprived of their motorcycles when they were on their way to workplace. During the previous week, many students fail to appear in the exams after they were stopped at the pickets and were taken to police stations only for riding motorcycles without precise number-plates. A number of parents were seen literally in tears as they rushed to the police stations to rescue their children from the police wrath. Again the credit goes to the newly-appointed CCPO for replicating the Sargodha policing model in Lahore. All of a sudden, city police were ordered to seize all the unregistered motorcycles including the motorbikes plying on the roads without precise number-plates. The policemen spread across the city and begun minting money by setting up hundreds of special pickets. The police impounded thousands of motorbikes of the poor but released the sons of the influential with protocol.
On Friday, two DSPs rushed to the Chuhng police picket to rescue their children after they were stopped by the police for riding unregistered motorcycles.
DSP Khizar and DSP Shoaib Khichi thrashed the policemen and took away their loved-ones along with the motorcycles from the police custody. The CCPO is still silent on the issue despite the incident was brought into his notice by his staff.
Not enough, many of the policemen are riding unregistered motorcycles but there is no one to take action against them under the Police Officer 2002.
It was learnt that the policemen are accepting Rs 1000 at every police station to hand over one seized motorcycle to the owner even if the motorcyclist produces the registration book and other documents before the police. The police have designed so complicated procedure for the recovery of the impounded vehicles that those who fail to bribe the cops, are still unable to get their two-wheelers back from the cops despite the lapse of two weeks. The money, being collected through this campaign, is shared among the police officials and officers on daily basis at the police station level.
Shaken by robbers’ raids the police launched the ruthless campaign in the biggest city of the Punjab province to multiply the miseries of the ordinary citizens. Though a few officers claim that the crime rate descended in Lahore s after the novel-policing introduced, the situation on ground is altogether different.
Last week, robbers hit were 250, robbing people of Rs980m from. The bandits also took away 32 cars and 110 motorcycles in one week.
Such type of crime-fighting strategy is in fact making mockery of the whole policing system. The police are going after the innocent citizens to extort money while the hardened criminals are striking brazenly. Cops have miserably failed to trace the criminals behind the recent high-profile sectarian attacks, major house robberies, and even abduction for ransom. We need reforms-oriented policing to fight terrorism, sectarianism, and heinous crimes simultaneously, they said.