KARACHI: Police dept still waiting for reward money
By S. Raza Hassan
KARACHI, Nov 24: Disbursement of reward money announced by the Sindh government for the arrest of the various terrorists and gangsters is pending for the last one year, sources in the law enforcement agencies told Dawn.
A senior police official said around a dozen high profile cases had been solved by the police during the last 18 months.
He cited cases like US consulate blast carried out in March this year and the case of slain religious cleric Allama Hasan Turabi and added that these cases had been solved and the accused arrested. The arrest of the gangster Arshad Pappu was another high profile case, officials said.
Citing further cases that had reward money, the official said that Aslam a high profile figure of Lashkar-i-Jhangvi Punjab having reward money of Rs500,000 was arrested.
Similarly, Junaid alias Jabi of Harkatul Mujaheedin Al Alami having a reward money of Rs0.5 million, Khazir Jamal carrying the same amount of reward money on his head was also arrested.
However, the disbursement of the reward money in these and many other cases are still awaited, the officer said.
“We have already carried out the paper work on our part by moving summaries of these cases to the home department, but things seems to have fallen victim to bureaucratic wrangling”, remarked a senior official of the police department, requesting anonymity.
Insiders pointed out that often these summaries are forwarded by the home department but these files seem to get held up in the finance department down the line.
Some official expressed reservations over the provincial government policy of announcing the reward money for a period of six months subject to renewal on the nature of the case. They questioned the rational of announcing reward money with time bar.
Mostly the specialised units of Crime Investigation Department (CID), Anti-Violent Crime Cell (AVCC) and Investigation wing of the police are facing problems due to the non-disbursement of the reward money, insiders said.
Explaining their shortcoming, a senior police official said that often ‘informers’ are mainly the beneficiary of the reward money, as we have to honor the promise of paying the reward money to them.
They (informer) keep coming to our offices in pursuance of the reward money and get exposed in the process, the police official maintained.
