KARACHI: Expressing his reservations over the colonial-era Police Act of 1861, Sindh police chief A. D. Khowaja has stressed the need to bring improvement in the existing police law which would not only encourage community participation but also guarantee the tenure of police officers’ posting that is vital for depoliticisation of the department.

The Sindh police department is currently functioning under the Police Act of 1861 as five years ago the Pakistan Peoples Party government repealed the Police Order-2002 and introduced the Sindh (Repeal of the Police Order, 2002 and Revival of the Police Act, 1861), Act, 2011, commonly known as Sindh Police Act, 2011.

“We cannot go back to the colonial-era police system whose sole purpose was to rule the people,” Inspector General of Police Khowaja said.

Talking to Dawn here, he added that Bangladesh had changed the old police act and likewise India had also introduced a metropolitan police system for its major cities.

Citing four lacunas in the 1861 Act, the IGP said that first it did not provide any safeguards against “the politicisation of the police force”.

Secondly, there was no concept of participation of people or community in the 1861 Act, he said, adding that there was no stability or security of tenure of the police officers’ posting.

Fourthly, he believed that the administrative and financial independence of the IGP did not exist in the 1861 Act.

He said he was leading the force of around 125,000 personnel with seven additional inspectors general of grade-21 but he could not make any independent financial and administrative decision.

He stressed the need to bring improvements in the Sindh Police Act of 2011 that had revived the 1861 police law.

He proposed that instead of home secretary the police chief be made ‘ex-officio secretary’ of his department so that he could take financial and administrative decisions.

‘Breakthrough’ in Amjad Sabri murder case

The IGP claimed that investigators got a breakthrough in the murder case of qawwal Amjad Sabri, who was assassinated in Liaquatabad on June 24.

“Investigators have made substantive progress and we are confident that the mystery behind the gruesome murder would be resolved soon,” he said.

He said that it was premature at this stage to talk any further about the possible motive and identity of the culprits.

He added a joint investigation team was already working on the case.

Armed pillion-riders sprayed Sabri, 40, son of qawwali maestro Ghulam Farid Sabri, with bullets in Liaquatabad when he was heading to a private TV channel in his car on June 24.

The killing was carried out on a day when the law enforcement agencies had claimed to have beefed up security in the wake of the kidnapping of Barrister Awais Shah, a son of the Sindh High Court Chief Justice Sajjad Ali Shah.

While the young lawyer was recently recovered in Tank, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the IGP did not talk much about the motive behind the high-profile kidnapping and said that a JIT was already looking into every aspect of the case.

Published in Dawn, July 25th, 2016