peshawar    -   The newly-appointed Capital City Police Officer (CCPO) Muhammad Ijaz Khan on Friday said that he would make efforts to eliminate burking criminal cases and improve policing.

Talking to The Nation, Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Muhammad Ijaz Khan, who has replaced Abbas Ahsan as the CCPO, said that his focus would be to eliminate burking.

“Burking means suppressing and hiding crimes and non-registration of FIRs in crimes. When a police station does not register FIRs in crimes, it means the SHO concerned tries to hide the crime taking place in his area. As a result, the crime in that area goes unnoticed and police patrolling in that area is also neglected by the high-ups because the paperwork shows the area to be having little crime rate,” he added.

The CCPO said that when FIRs are not registered, the criminals get encouraged in an area, which is why he would like officers of all police stations to work out all pending FIRs and begin investigating them.

Ijaz Khan had joined the police force in Punjab as an ASP in the year 2002. Later, he was transferred to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in the year 2007. He also served in the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) from 2012 to 2014 while later he rejoined the KP police and served as regional police officer for Kohat and Malakand regions later on.

Earlier, he has also served on other positions including the Commandant Frontier Reserve Police (FRP) and DIG inquiries while his most recent posting before becoming CCPO was the head of Special Branch police.

It merits a mention here that the main challenge for the newly-appointed chief of Peshawar police is the street crime that has witnessed an increase in the provincial capital in recent years. Analysts believe that one of the reasons behind the crime rate is unemployment and price hike, while some believe that policing also needs to be improved for the purpose.