May 11, 2006	Thursday	Rabi-us-Sani 12, 1427

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MUZAFFARABAD, May 10: A special police team has been constituted to unearth serial killers who are believed to have murdered 10 people in two southern districts of Azad Kashmir in the past two weeks.

The special team would work under Assistant Inspector-General (Investigations) Raja Nasim Khan and work in addition to the investigation teams already formed in the districts, AJK’s Inspector General Police Shahid Hasan said here on Wednesday.

He was talking to newsmen after handing over a Rs214,000 insurance claim cheque to the widow of a deceased police official at his office, he said additional force had also been deployed in the targeted districts.

On April 28, The serial killers had struck two houses in the Sensa area in Kotli district and bludgeoned two women and their daughters to death.

On April 30, a similar incident occurred in another village of the same district but the people inside the house woke up and their shouting forced the attackers to flee. But, they clubbed to death a couple and their young daughter the same night in the Mooli Nar village in Kotli district.

The whole region was terrorised after the killers struck three days ago, killing a couple and their infant daughter in Islamgarh in Mirpur district.

Stressing that the police was using all possible means to arrest the killers, the IGP said that his force faced acute shortage of manpower in the wake of the earthquake.

“We are short of 6,000 hands,” he said, adding the department had requested the prime minister to meet the demand in three phases.

He agreed that protocol duties were hampering police in its primary duty of watch and ward and crime control.

“There still remain a sizeable number of foreigners associated with UN agencies and international NGOs and we have to provide them with constant security cover. And since the VIP delegations regularly visit the quake-hit zone, we have to carry out protocol duties. We have requested the government to increase our strength though,” the IGP said.

Mr Hasan said the Azad Kashmir police were also facing a resource crunch, adding that the government had not cleared the backlog of payments.

“At the launch of the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus service in last April, we were promised additional funds for maintaining security. Every bus run costs us Rs1.1 million but we are yet to be reimbursed that money,” he said.

“Our requirements are bound to increase when the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad truck service and Poonch-Rawalakot bus service start. We have requested the government to raise this issue with the federal government,” he said.