LAHORE, Oct 12: Police are harassing people at pickets that have mushroomed here after the murder of Maulana Azam Tariq.

The police high-ups believe that pickets are the only way to maintain law and order.

The Punjab chief minister’s order to frisk pillion riders has aggravated the situation and made lives of motorcyclists miserable.

Misbehaviour, extortion and unjustified checking of motorists have become routine at pickets.

Most of the police officials deployed at pickets are without any communication tools. The police also avoid following the four-wheelers that fail to stop.

Motorcyclists are the main targets of police pickets. Reports suggest that a motorcyclist is stopped at six different pickets in a day.

The way police deal with people at pickets is also questionable. “The way policemen search bodies and check documents at pickets makes motorists feel like criminals,” motorcyclists Nadeem and Hasan told this reporter in Faisal Town on Saturday.

They said that policemen at pickets were harassing peaceful citizens and trying to extort money from them. They said those who put up resistance were harassed in different ways, one of which was unauthorized detention at pickets for quite some time.

Shaukat, an accountant in a multinational company in Gulberg, said that while returning to his home in Canal View on a motorcycle, he had been thoroughly checked for the last couple of days at pickets in the Central Point, Barkat Market, Shah Di Khui and finally at the gateway of Canal View. “It is really a nightmare to be checked at least four times a day on my way home.”

He said that he might become a patient if this continued to happen.

Ali Raza, a teacher by profession, said the way the police searched his body and documents at a picket in Gulshan-i-Ravi while returning from an academy, was humiliating to say the least. “I have no words to explain my agony.”

Document-checking is not a problem at all, said Naveed of Town Ship. The problem arises when one is asked to explain one’s relationship with an accompanying woman.

Smelling mouth and asking questions like where one is coming or where he is going are routine tactics employed by the police at pickets.

The pickets are set up on all important roads, like the Ferozepur Road, Gulberg’s Main Boulevard, Jail Road, New Garden Town, Queens Road, Faisal Town, Model Town, Model Town Link Road, Thokhar Niaz Baig, Punjab University Campus, Lakshami Chowk, Circular Road, Mughalpura and Baghbanpura. They are also set up on link roads and even on streets to ‘deter criminals’.

Mobile police squads are also looking around for easy prey on the roads most of the time. The police are of the view that there is no other way to check the increasing crime rate. The pickets work as a deterrent against the crime against property, they believe.

City police chief Khwaja Khalid Farooq was not available for comments on the issue.