KARACHI - Karachi operation has not yielded the desired results despite tall claims made by security agencies.

Target killings remained on the rise during the outgoing year, 2016.

Overall 35 percent decline in crimes has been reported in the city during the last 27 months.

Operation against anti-social elements and terrorists commenced in Karachi in September 2013, and the law-enforcement agencies have claimed to have arrested over 70,000 suspects so far.

The current year’s statistics reveal that target killings claimed at least 632 precious lives, including those of high-profile personalities.

Victims of target killings included army, police, Rangers and traffic police personnel.

No major breakthrough was achieved this year in terms of nabbing hardened target killers except the reported arrests of two militants, associated with a banned organisation, by Counter- Terrorism Department (CTD) in the murder case of famous Sufi singer Amjad Sabri.

Sectarian killings also claimed the lives of several people in the outgoing year, while police and Rangers have failed to make headway in getting to these killers.

A senior police official, wishing not to be named, admitted that the National Action Plan (NAP) and National Counter- Terrorism Authority (NCTA) had failed to bring positive changes in the criminal justice system.

He said that no improvement had been witnessed in the conviction rate as 95 percent of the accused arrested during operation were released on bail due to the conventional mode of interrogation.

“The jails, overcrowded when the operation started, were unable to accommodate 5000 additional inmates,” he added.

It’s worth mentioning here that the law- enforcement agencies arrested several persons more than once during the operation, but they received bails by the courts due to insufficient evidence.

Naseem aka Firon, considered a notorious sectarian killer, associated with outlawed Lashker-e-Jhangvi, has been arrested recently after his release in similar cases earlier.

Police officials privy to the matter revealed to The Nation that police and Rangers had booked several persons in the cases pending since 2000, and it would be difficult to get to the real culprits as most of these cases were now closed.

Police officials pointed out that number of cases were ruined by security agencies because they nominated irrelevant persons as accused.

They said that Professor Shakeel Auj’s case was ruined due to the bad intention of security agencies.

“Kidnappings for ransom and cases of extortion have declined in the last couple of years because Lyari gangsters had gone into hiding ever since the operation started,” they elaborated.

Sources said that Uzair Jan Baloch brought back to the country from abroad was the political face of Lyari gangs, but the real characters of gang war managed to flee abroad, including Noor Muhammad aka Baba Ladla, Ghaffar Zikri, Austad Taju, Rashid aka Rekha and others.

Crime statistics, prior to the Karachi operation, show that the crimes committed by Lyari gangsters made up more than 70 percent of the total number of crimes committed in the city.

“Those gangsters killed in alleged encounters by the law-enforcement agencies were petty criminals, while majority of the gangsters involved in the killings of hundreds of people are still at large and no effort has been made by the agencies to get them back to the country.

Sources said that these gangsters were hiding in Iran and Middle East from where a number of political criminals had been brought back by the agencies to gain media attention.