July 22, 2008	Tuesday	Rajab 18, 1429

KARACHI, July 21: The zone-wise investigation wing of the capital city police has been bifurcated by creating a post of an SP in each zone to share the workload that was previously being managed by an SSP investigation single-handedly.

Each of the three zones would now be supervised by an SP and an SSP investigation with each having his respective police towns to share the workload and achieve better monitoring, Capital City Police Officer Waseem Ahmed told Dawn on Monday.

A single officer looking after the investigation of one zone was not at all a practical arrangement due to the immense workload as around 30,000 cases were reported every year on an average in the three zones, he said, adding that with the latest arrangement each of six officers would be handling 5,000 cases in a year, which was a manageable job comparatively.

However, he said, the number of cases was still less than those reported in Lahore despite the fact that the city was much smaller in population and area. “Lahore’s average per annum crime figure comes to around 60,000 cases,” he added.

The city police chief held SHOs’ tendency of not registering FIRs as one of the basic factors of low reporting of crime.

An officer would not be held responsible for a surge in the registration of the FIRs, he claimed, making it clear that if the investigation was poor the officer concerned would be reprimanded.

The investigation wing, according to a notification issued late Saturday night by the Capital City Police Officer, has been bifurcated as:

SSP Investigation (Zone South-1) Shahid Hayat will have jurisdiction over Clifton, Lyari and Keamari towns.

SP (Zone South-2) Niaz Ahmed Khosa will look after the investigation of Saddar and Jamshed towns.

SSP Investigation (Zone East-1) Abdul Khaliq Shaikh will handle the investigation of Gulshan, Gadap and Shah Faisal towns.

DSP Qamar Raza has been posted as SP Investigation (Zone East-2) in his own pay and scale. Bin Qasim and Landhi towns investigation come in his jurisdiction.

SP Khurram Waris has been posted as SSP Investigation (Zone West-1) with jurisdiction over Baldia and North Nazimabad towns.

SP Fayyaz Qureshi has been posted as SP Investigation (Zone West-2) having Liaquatabad, Gulberg and New Karachi towns in his jurisdiction. It is worth mentioning here that a separate post of DIG Investigation exists to look after the specialised police units such as anti-car-lifting unit, anti-violent-crime unit and special investigation unit. However, at present people have to deal with their area police stations for reports and other similar matters concerning car theft after the ACLU was castrated by a pervious provincial police officer.