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| October 22, 2001 | Monday | Shaba'an 4, 1422 |
Police investigators need to be trained
LAHORE, Oct 21: The long overdue separation of investigation from the watch and ward duties is expected to bring relief to police and litigants and help expedite the judicial process.
The decision, being implemented from Lahore from this week, will leave little room for investigation officers to keep cases pending with them on different grounds.
However, senior police officers involved in the exercise of revamping the police system say there is a need to train the investigators on scientific lines to make the new system work.
Right now, an officer at the police station level is supposed to carry out investigation besides maintaining law and order, doing security duty and appearing before different courts.
“This means no progress in any case. Instead this situation adds to the complainants’ problems,” say senior officials.
The complainants are the “main beneficiary” of the separation of investigation. “Now they will not have to visit police stations everyday in search of investigation staff which is supposed to be available in a separate section.”
In the present set-up, an investigator who is transferred from a police station is supposed to carry with him files of all cases under process. This is because the officer replacing him does not admits in-complete cases. The result is the litigants remain shuttling between two police stations.
Under the new policy, this problem is likely to be overcome to a considerable extent with an investigator handling 50 cases only in a year.
It is also expected to remove complaints that police do not submit cases in time to the courts. According to the law, a case must be submitted to a court after the completion of investigation within 14 days. The law allows another seven days if a case is not completed in the given time.
Right now, cases remain pending with police for months and, in some cases, for years. Judicial officers keep on issuing instructions for submission of cases in time but to no avail.
Frequent transfer of cases from one investigator to another or from one section of the police to another is yet another exercise which delays the inquiry process. The cases are transf