LAHORE, July 28: Over 30 per cent of the complaints lodged with the Anti-Corruption Establishment, Punjab, during the last few years pertain to police.

In the provincial metropolis, however, the percentage of the complaints lodged with the ACE against police is as high as 50 per cent.

During the first six months of this year, the police department has retained its top position. About 500 inquiries were being conducted against police out of a total of 2,700 inquiries the ACE had been looking into across the province.

Some 873 inquiries have been under way in Lahore, Kasur, Okara and Sheikhupura since the beginning of 2002. Of them about 350 are against the police.

ACE Assistant Director (Complaints) Imranur Rehman told Dawn that every third complaint they receive was against the police.

About the nature of complaints against the police lodged with the department, he said the complaints were regarding illegal confinement, registration of fake FIR, removal of the name of accused or main accused from the FIR, refusal to register the FIR, illegal gratification from accused or complainant, inflicting torture by taking bribe, fraud with innocent people and torture them if they complain about such events mostly occur in villages, stealing gold and other valuables from the bodies, charging huge sum of money from relatives to transport bodies to the dead house for autopsy, deprive people of their wallets and valuables on the pretext of search on pickets and other complaints.

Mr Rehman said that not all inquiries were converted into cases because some of them were fake. He said the police officials were also not found guilty in some cases because of lack of evidence.

When contacted Punjab ACE Director Tariq Sadaat said the department had sent some proposals to the Punjab Governor a couple of days ago to check corruption in the police department.

He said unless there was no check on the police at grass root level, corruption would remain rampant. He said district and city governments could not come up to people’s expectations and failed to bring about a change in police culture. Some 47 police officials were convicted during the last five years in the province. Most of them were inspectors, sub-inspectors and head constables.

Eight police officials were convicted during the first six months of this year. Of them, head constable Nazir Ahmed was sentenced for two-year imprisonment with Rs5,000 fine; ASI Babar Zaman was awarded one year RI with Rs5,000 fine; ASI Shahdat Ali one year RI with a fine of Rs20,000; ASI Shabbir Hussain’s period of detention would be considered as period of imprisonment; head constable Muhammad Aslam was awarded two years’ RI with a fine of Rs50,000. The other were ASIs Sardar Farooq and Suba Sadiq and SI Sadiq.

All the convicts had received bribe to facilitate parties involved in cases.

SSP (Investigation) Muhammad Amin said the department had established a cell in each district to entertain complaints against the police. He said the complaint cells also recommended punishment if any official was found guilty of corruption. He said the cells did not receive as much complaints as the ACE did.

“One can not determine the exact ratio of true complaints against the police by having registered the total number of complaints because most of them are fake,” he added.