KARACHI: Dr Syed Kaleem Imam, inspector general of Sindh police, on Wednesday ordered an operation against people running vehicles on ‘open letters’ and committing other violations of traffic rules saying such practices were not only encouraging crimes, but also causing a financial loss to the national exchequer.

The provincial police chief has ordered a crackdown through a letter written to the deputy inspectors general of Karachi and other divisions of the province apparently in compliance with a decision taken in a meeting presided over by the Sindh chief minister on Tuesday. The vehicles used in the recent deadly attack on the Chinese consulate were found to be operating on ‘open letters’ for the last six years without any registration.

“It has been observed that there are a number of vehicles plying on streets of Karachi without any proof of ownership and driven on open letters,” said the letter.

The IG directed the DIGs of Karachi, Hyderabad, Sukkur, Larkana, Shaheed Benazirabad and Mirpurkhas that this tendency needed to be discouraged to push the actual owners of the vehicles to get their vehicles registered in their own names.

Published in Dawn, December 6th, 2018