Security is all the concern in the present times for the state, but the surveillance cameras, guards, reinforced gates, fences and barbed wires have not really made its “sensitive” installations and buildings impenetrable. The measures seem to have only succeeded in limiting public access to the protected places rather than deterring terrorists and the evil minded.

Last week’s breaches of the security of the Benazir Bhutto International Airport and the police lines headquarters in Rawalpindi by imposters were indeed shocking and laughable in turns.

It was scary enough that a gang could kidnap and rob a moneychanger arriving at the airport from Karachi with Rs10 million, but that a serving police officer and two retired army officers were part of the gang was really shocking.

“Totally intolerable” is what a senior police officer engaged in counterterrorism efforts called the two incidents. “It is not important that police have recovered part of the looted money and arrested the bad cop. Rise of criminality within the ranks is more worrisome to me,” he said.

In his view the police and other institutions need to address the dangers within alongside those without.

Only two days before the security-assisted gang struck at the airport, a lone man had shown that police could be tricked into opening the doors of their most secured headquarters just by making a telephone call.

Though the man was said to have failed the test to join police service, he had talent enough to convincingly pose as a Superintendent of Police.

He called the control room, the nerve centre of the police headquarters, and commanded that a car pick him up from his hotel for an inspection tour of the heavily guarded police lines. The operator at the control room conveyed his wish to senior officers and the imposter arrived in style.

Obedient officers showed him around - even the sensitive sections and in appreciation of their “good work” the SP sahib handed cash reward of Rs1,000 each to two of them.

His ego and confidence puffed up, the man commanded that he be taken to Civil Lines and women police stations for similar inspection.

The two police stations the impersonator visited are located adjacent to the Special Branch headquarters of Rawalpindi and the barracks where the recently passed out corporals of Counterterrorism Department had been staying.

It was when only he was “inspecting” the women police station after going through the Civil Line police station that doubts arose about his identity. A police car waiting for him outside was supposed to be somewhere else.

Alerted by the sudden flurry of excitement about his presence the mysterious SP quietly vanished, but not without leaving behind a laughable tale.

While the Counterterrorism Department reported to the Punjab authorities in detail how an ordinary man breached the security and disappeared, police dug out the man’s past.

It turned out that it was for the second time that the man had breached police security.

His real name was Omer Masood with the alias Omer Farooq SP, a resident of Gujranwala. On September 28, 2010, while staying with a friend in the army mess, he had called the police control room as SP of Islamabad police and asked for a police van to be sent to the scene of accident in Lal Kurti as his car had been hit in the limits of Civil Lines police in Rawalpindi.

“On verifying from the Islamabad police, it emerged that he was an imposter,” police officer Imran Abbas told Dawn. “I rushed to Lal Kurti chowki and found him sitting in my chair with five policemen in attendance.”

Questions put to him made him confess that he was an imposter and he was arrested. He took to the forgery after failing the CSS exam for police service.

His trial was still going on in a court when he decided to have the thrill for a second time.

Published in Dawn, May 2nd, 2015

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