PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa police on Thursday said 2017 remained the most peaceful year in a decade with incidence of terrorism coming down by 51 per cent compared with the last year.

An annual report issued by the KP police department said the province witnessed a considerable decline in the number of terrorist acts and other crimes due to the proactive and effective strategy adopted by the department.

It pointed out that the incidence of terrorist incidents came down by 51 per cent during the current year compared to 2016 with the number of incidents dropping to 126 from 258.

The year witnessed three major incidents, including suicide attacks on police AIG Ashraf Noor and Frontier Corps Major Jamal Sheran and recent attack on the Agriculture Training Institute Peshawar, where nine people including eight students were killed.

KP police say incidence of terrorism declines 51pc compared to last year’s

The report claimed that demands for extortion also decreased by 27 per cent during the current year.

It however offered no actual figures for it.

It said the counter-terrorism department arrested 428 terror suspects and in around 350 cases were traced and challan submitted before the courts.

“During the year, the police also managed to foil 95 incidents of terrorism and arrested 79 terrorists, including those carrying head money,” it said.

The report claimed that police also managed to safely rescue 15 hostages during the year, while CTD conducted about 1000 intelligence based operations and arrested 1346 suspects.

It said that during this period, CTD also managed to recover 278 hand grenades, 352 kilograms of explosives, nine suicide jackets and automatic weapons.

The report said under the National Action Plan, about 12248 search and strike operations were carried out throughout the province and 76244 suspects were taken into custody.

The police also checked 378,940 houses during the same period and registered 12,891 FIRs for violation of tenant information forms.

Also, FIRs were registered against 1,529 hotels for failing to verify particulars of their guests.

It said the other crimes, including kidnapping, armed robbery, theft, vehicle theft and car snatching, witnessed a downward trend in 2017 compared to the previous year.

It said the kidnapping incidents had come down by 10 per cent, armed robbery’s 34 per cent, vehicle theft’s 26 per cent and car snatching’s 36 per cent.

“The number of murders dropped by seven per cent and attempted murders by 10 per cent,” it claimed.

The report said during the current year, the police registered 6,266 FIRs against celebratory firing compared to 4,662 of the last year.

It added that the police registered 37,666 cases against drug peddlers and arrested 39,497 people during the year.

“On average, 117 accused were arrested a day,” it said.

The report said during the review period, the police recovered 15,826kg charas, 695kg heroin, 19kg ice and 26,502 liquor bottles.

It said during the period, 157,996 FIRs were digitised, nine million vehicles were checked through vehicle verification system and 24 stolen vehicles were recovered.

The report said 15 million people were checked under criminal record verification system and it led to the arrests of 422 proclaimed offenders.

It said the department penalised 1,340 cops on various complaints and 114 were dismissed from service.

Published in Dawn, December 15th, 2017