LAHORE, March 12: The recently created investigation wing of the Capital City Police (CCP) has been working without modern facilities required for “effective and successful” crime detection, say officials.

All they have on hand, as the officials put it, is ‘ample time’ for investigation.

“We don’t even have sufficient number of vehicles what to talk of modern forensic and finger prints equipment — the basic items required by an investigator to help him in his work — or trained manpower,” officials told Dawn on Tuesday. The 16 investigation centres established in the city since the formation of the wing have one vehicle each at its disposal.

“Neither new recruitment has been made, nor have the trained officials transferred to the investigation wing. The officials given the task of investigation are believed to be good at investigating crime. That’s about it,” added senior officers.

Crime investigation was separated from the watch and ward and other functions of the police on Feb 15 under the police reforms, ostensibly to improve police performance.

The wing, headed by the SSP (investigations), has the strength of 2,000 policemen, including three SPs, 12 SDPOs, 38 inspectors, 337 SIs, 253 ASIs, and 1,008 constables. It is supposed to detect all types of crime, including crimes against person, property and vehicle lifting/snatching.

All old cases have been handed over to the wing except those in which an accused could be convicted for a period of maximum three years. Such cases would be dealt with by the operations wing.

Each investigation officer will deal at least 50 cases a year, both old and new. They can be assigned more cases if needed.

DSP (investigation) Umar Virk said the wing would be reoriented in line with modern crime investigation methods with the passage of time.

“So far, we have no modern or scientific method to conduct our investigations. What we have at our disposal is time,” he added.

“The investigation side was separated from other functions of police to enhance efficiency of the force. But so far it has only added to troubles (faced by complainants),” grumbled Altaf Ahmad, a complainant in a murder case registered after the launch of the new system.

He said the “police arrived at the crime scene after about an hour of the commission of the crime and the investigation team was late by three hours. The investigation took hours to finish following which he was told to arrange transport to remove the body to the mortuary.”

“The next morning, however, we were informed by the (investigation) officer that he could not proceed with his investigations unless he was equipped with resources necessary to deal with the (murder) case,” Altaf alleged.

Sohail Raza, a complainant in an old murder case, said he was pursuing the case with the Rang Mahal police since long. He said he was informed on March 5 that the “case had been transferred to the investigation wing and he was told to meet the DSP for further action.”

He said he was confused and worried about the fate of the case.

When contacted, district police officer (DPO) Javed Noor said: “The primary objective of the wing would be to rapidly dispose of the old cases. The cases which used to take six month to make any progress will not take even six weeks due to separation of police functions.”

He said the investigation officers would not be allowed to resort to ‘inhuman’ investigation methods. Though the wing was short of resources but would be streamlined in a couple of months.

Training of the investigation officers was the area the police were looking forward to improving, he claimed.

“A 40-day training programme will be arranged at the Chuhng Training Centre in order to apprise the officers of modern investigative methods. The police need some time to bring about a structural change.” he added.

Mr Noor claimed that people would see a “visible change in the police performance very soon.”