KARACHI: Top provincial and city authorities, including the chief secretary and city commissioner, and provincial chiefs of police and Pakistan Rangers have been put on notice to appear before a larger bench of the Supreme Court of Pakistan that is set to resume the proceedings of the Karachi killing suo motu case on Monday (today).

The apex court bench is headed by Chief Justice of Pakistan Anwar Zaheer Jamali with Justices Amir Hani Muslim, Shaikh Azmat Saeed, Faisal Arab and Khilji Arif Hussain as its members.

The case is being taken up after a pause of over 20 months apparently because the security situation in the city has shown marked improvement during the past two years.

Informed sources confided to Dawn that the Karachi police chief had already submitted a detailed report in court on the law and order situation in the city.

Besides, they said, another detailed report would also be submitted in court on behalf of the inspector general of police Ghulam Hyder Jamali.

According to the IGP’s report, the overall law and order situation in 2011 had deteriorated to an extent that the apex court had to take suo motu notice of it.

It said that oweing to concerted efforts launched after the intervention of the apex court, the provincial police took several steps to improve the security situation in the province.

The report said that there was a marked decrease in crimes, including targeted killings and terrorist activities.

It said that there was a sharp decline in terrorism-related cases in the city as 42 such cases were reported in 2014 and only four such cases in 2015, while no such case was reported in the current year.

Similarly, the report said, the incidences of murder had also decreased by 64 per cent, as there were 1,640 murders in 2014 and 849 in 2015, while the figure in the current year was 90. It said that no case of kidnapping for ransom was reported in the current year, while the number of such cases in 2014 and 2015 were 97 and one, respectively.

According to the report, robbery incidents also went down by 80pc.

Moreover, it said that there was a marked decrease in the cases of extortion that showed overall 60pc decline in the past two years. The report said that the overall improvement was also appreciated by the community and civil society, resultantly the economic activities of the city increased, flight of capital to other countries stopped and social and cultural activities normalised.

The police report also stated that several high-profile cases had been detected by the police. These cases included, Safoora Goth bus carnage, murder cases of Sabeen Mehmud, Rubina Khalid and Parveen Rehman, Shikarpur imambargah blast case and arrest of the accused in attack on Justice Maqbool Baqar.

The last regular hearing of the Karachi suo motu case was conducted on June 23, 2014 by a three-judge bench headed by then CJP Tassadduq Hussain Jillani.

Published in Dawn, March 7th, 2016