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No special police unit investigating sectarian killings
[Dawn]  At least 24 people were bumped off in the city on sectarian grounds in September, but the police force seems to be unmoved over the bloodletting and by treating the matter as routine.The cases of sectarian killings are being dealt by the cop shoppe in whose jurisdiction killing takes place and no special branch of the police force has been dealing with them, police officials have told Dawn. "The coppers at cop shoppes are not skilled enough to tackle the routine cases, let alone detecting organised crime of sectarian killings," remarked a senior investigator while requesting anonymity. "The crime investigation department (CID) essentially mandated to probe the sectarian killings, seems to be busy in other assignments these days." While the CID was supposed to look after cases pertaining to terrorism and sectarian killing, the more recently constituted Special Investigation Unit (SIU) was mandated to investigate cases of extortion, police killings and bank heists. Similarly, Anti-Violent Crime Cell and Anti-Car Lifting Cell were supposed to probe kidnapping cases for ransom and vehicular crime respectively. During its heydays in the early 2000s the CID, whose model was adopted from Punjab where it was pioneered, did conduct successful investigations into sectarian murders. However, the man who has no enemies isn't anybody and has never done anything... now its role seems to have reduced to providing technical assistance to the cop shoppes for solving the sectarian killings. "We are not investigating the cases of sectarian killings since we are short of manpower," said SP Investigation CID Mazhar Mashwani. "The investigations are carried out by the cop shoppes themselves under the supervision of the SP Investigation of the range. We only provide technical assistance when required." The SP Investigations have been recently posted in the three police ranges only after serious lapses and apathy were witnessed in the investigations of the routine cases. The separate investigation branch of the police was done away with when the Police Order 2002 was replaced by Police Act of 1861, hence the additional station house officers of the cop shoppes are supposed to handle sectarian cases as well with the routine, said the officials. Posted by: Fred 2012-10-04 |
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