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LAHORE, Aug 8: The investigation wing of the capital city district police, realising the need to reduce burden of pending as well as fast adding investigation cases, has submitted a proposal to the Punjab IGP to restructure the wing and further bifurcate the investigation divisions.
Sources privy to the development told Dawn that record pendency of cases and heavy workload on divisional superintendents of police investigation of four divisions had adversely affected the performance of the wing.
Keeping in view the gravity of the situation, DIG (Investigation) Tassaduq Husain forwarded a request to Capital City Police Officer (additional IG) Malik Muhammad Iqbal for creating two more divisions. It has also been forwarded to the Punjab IGP.
The proposal was moved to the IGP in the middle of July 2007, but there was no further progress in this regard, sources said.
Of the four divisions, the Cantonment division has the maximum 24 police stations, followed by the city division’s (21), the Saddar division’s (16) and the Model Town division has 15 police stations.
Sources said the proposal stated that the Cantonment and Saddar divisions had a vast area to control and most of the time it was difficult for these to manage the work.
In order to handle the growing crime rate in the capital city set-up, the proposal sought creation of Civil Lines and Iqbal Town divisions. The proposed restructuring included Model Town division with 13 police stations, Cantonment and Civil Lines divisions with 12 police stations each, Iqbal Town division with 10, Saddar division with eight while the city division with the same 21 police stations.
CCPO: Malik Iqbal said the idea was necessitated in the wake of rising burden of cases and workload on the SPs investigation. He said the process of restructuring might take a few months, but it would ultimately lead to the supremacy and quality of the investigation wing.
COMMENTS: A senior police officer said in the existing situation, the divisional SPs were not able to spare much time to dispose of cases speedily owing to law and order priorities. Two more divisions would help the police dispose of the cases.
Another police officer of the investigation wing believed that the idea would help improve the situation. Supporting his argument, he said, the Saddar division topped crime of heinous nature, followed by the Cantonment division. If the divisions were further bifurcated, the cases would be traced and challaned speedily.
He further said four SPs of investigation were not available most of the time when the honourable courts summoned them in cases of different nature while taking suo motu action.
He said in the wake of challenging role of supervisory police officers, who head both operations and investigation wing of two police stations, addition of two new SPs of investigation and reduction in police stations would lessen burden on them.
