LAHORE: After the Punjab home department officially notified four police stations of the Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) and their jurisdictions throughout the province a few days ago, two police stations of Lahore and Faisalabad are ready to start official business amid below-average performance, acute shortage of quality investigation officers and fear of poor coordination between the CTD and the Crime Investigation Agency (CIA) police.

The CTD, which is going to independently lodge cases of all terrorism and sectarian incidents in the near future, is currently continuing its covert operations of intelligence gathering about high-profile suspects, activities of militant networks and arrests of their members and keep an eye on activities of members listed under the Fourth Schedule of the Anti-Terrorism Act 1997.

Officials say the current operations of the CTD are delivering about 20pc results in combating sectarianism and terrorism because of poor human resource, lack of training for intelligence gathering and lack of coordination with other law-enforcement agencies.

They say that approximately 1,250 people listed in Fourth Schedule are supposed to be watched by the CTD and local police but a majority of list-occupants are overlooked by officials, adding that entry of young people from Punjab to newly announced militants groups nationally and internationally is a big challenge for the CTD.

The officials say that the first batch of 421 corporals, who are going to start their six-week training by Turkish experts at the Elite Training School, Bedian, would join field duties after two months at two police stations of Lahore (covering Lahore district and Sheikhupura region) and Faisalabad (covering Faisalabad and Sargodha regions) in which station house officers and their subordinates would lodge FIRs, investigate suspects on physical remand and pursue trail of suspects in courts. Each police station will have a DSP as district officer designation and SP/SSP as regional officer.

Initially, four police stations-Lahore, Faisalabad, Multan and Rawalpindi-will cover capital city district Lahore and nine police regions and later more police stations would have each police region.

Two police stations ready for working have up to 17 kanal land, three-storey buildings with cover area of two and half kanals, 20 feet high and three feet broad RCC wall, four watchtowers each, offices for SPs, DSPs, SHOs and IOs, barracks for 50 corporals, eight lock-ups, mess, all rooms and lock-ups linked with computers and surveillance cameras.

Officials say separate uniform of police station staff is being introduced. They say the CTD will have plenty of physical resources, modern gadgetry, weapons and training, but the major challenge it is currently facing is dead wood of DSPs, inspectors, SIs and ASIs of the Punjab Police who need to be replaced with physically-fit and dedicated officers to lead intelligence-led operations.

The corporals will be divided into three sections of a police station with 45pc for intelligence work, 28pc for operations (with camouflaged uniform) and 26pc for investigation work.

A CTD source told Dawn that officials working in newly-announced police stations, which would have territorial restrictions, would have powers to get 30-day physical remand of detained suspects under 7-ATA, extendable up to 90 days as per the new national internal security policy .

The source said one of the major problems the CTD was facing currently was poor coordination with the CIA of Punjab police which also used to act against terror organisations, investigate terrorism cases and arrest suspects. He claimed usually the CIA did not cooperate with the CTD because of professional jealousy which needed to be addressed for collective efforts against war against terrorism.

He said though the CTD police stations would lodge all terrorism-related FIRs and investigate cases independently but poor coordination and race to arrest suspects directly or indirectly might create a problem between the CTD and CIA in future.

He hoped that the performance of CTD would improve in the future because of more legal powers and resources.

Published in Dawn, November 24th, 2014