KARACHI: With the Karachi operation entering the seventh month, conviction to thousands of suspects arrested over half a year exercise still remains a challenge for both the judiciary and the law-enforcement agencies mainly because of weak investigation for which the police have ‘punished’ their more than 100 officers, it emerged on Saturday.

In a report compiled by the additional IG Sindh office regarding the performance of the investigation officers, it emerged that some 115 assistant sub-inspectors, sub-inspectors and inspectors faced ‘minor’ to ‘major’ punishment for failing to meet the challenge and their ‘flawed’ work helped suspects to get out of the clutches of the law.

“In three zones — east, west and south — of the Karachi police organisational structure, most of the punished officers are posted in east zone,” said a source citing details of the report. The source added that a total of 61 zone east officers were punished, 32 of them faced major while 29 minor punishments. “In zone west, 41 officers faced the same fate with 29 of them being punished with minor punishments and 12 with major ones. Similarly, the south zone punished a total of 13 officers with 11 minor and two major punishments.”

Not entirely similar, but the same action was also witnessed in the specialised unit of the Sindh police where the authorities found some 35 officers associated with crime investigation agency (CIA) who had not performed up to the mark while pursuing cases of the suspects arrested during the past six months amid the ‘targeted-operation’.

“Action has been taken against the investigators, who failed in the cases because of their defective investigations or being hostile witnesses,” said the text headlined over the data. Though the officials argue that the trend to ‘punish’ the officers is not new, it was put on hold for years and only reactivated recently to convey the message of accountability among the officers assigned different tasks.

Apart from cut in salaries and stoppage to annual increment, the punishments even include termination and dismissal from the services of the policemen. The officials claim the move has started working and the results are expected to emerge within the next couple of months.

“The terms of minor and major punishments are officially termed across all departments and institutions of the government,” said an official, explaining ‘minor’ and ‘major’ punishments. “In minor punishment, the officers are issued censure and their annual increment is severed. These two types of punishments are counted under minor ones. Any officer can face both at a time or anyone of them depending on the level of his mistakes.”In major ones, he said, length of any officer could be reduced as punishment so he or she automatically lost the level of seniority he was enjoying at that time. Monthly salary of the officer could also be cut for a certain period and his or her rank could be reverted, he added.

“Under major punishment, the officer can also face compulsory retirement which is not counted as termination,” he said. “Similarly, the officer can also be terminated or dismissed from the police service. In case of termination, he or she is still considered for reemployment in any of the government institution while in case of dismissal he or she is no more eligible to serve in any public sector institution.”