LAHORE: Pakistan's first specialised homicide investigation unit launched by Punjab police last month comprises a 478-strong unit which pairs veterans with university graduates who have had an extra year of training in forensics, report writing and interrogation.

Reforming the crumbling criminal justice system and the cash-starved, poorly-trained police force is vital to stability in the country.

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This is partly because antiquated courts rely heavily on witness testimony and evidence found at the scene, and both are easily manipulated, say police and lawyers.

Inspector General Police Punjab Mushtaq Sukhera hopes the new unit will help put an end to the manipulation.

"There was some pressure to plant evidence in the past, and the courts did not really want to rely on it," says Sukhera. "With this new unit there is no need."

In most murder cases, victims' families say they know who the killer is, police say. Yet, few officers are trained to collect evidence to prove it and sometimes make it up.

A dozen senior prosecutors and police told Reuters they coached witnesses and planted evidence, but only to incriminate the guilty.

"We get the right guy by the wrong methods," one senior officer in the eastern city of Lahore told Reuters, requesting anonymity.

Without a protection program, witnesses are afraid to testify, leaving police with little choice but to coach them and plant evidence, says Hassan Abbas, author of "The Taliban Revival" and a prominent expert on police reforms.

"You can't ask someone to risk everything if they are not convinced it will make any difference," he says.

Abbas argued that the new homicide unit was not enough.

"Basic problems like lack of police training, political interference and lack of funding are still not being addressed," he says. "Announcing new units is nice for the media, but the basics are still neglected."

Another challenge for police is that Islamic laws allowing victims' families to pardon killers in exchange for cash mean the guilty can go free and the innocent may be blackmailed.

"People are losing faith in the justice system day by day," says defence lawyer Raja Ghaneem Khan.

He recently got three men acquitted after a judge ruled evidence was planted and the men were in custody when the murder occurred. They were on death row for five years before being cleared.

'Old wine, new bottles'

At a mosque in Lahore last month, a team from the new homicide unit carefully photographed a corpse sprawled in the library, a bloody axe wedged in its back.

"In the old days, they would have just moved the body immediately and vital evidence would have been lost," says Umar Riaz, head of the new unit's Lahore section.

More than 400 homicide cases have been registered in the last month and by mid-October, the unit was close to completing one hundred. So far, 24 people have appeared in court based on its findings.

But funding and training gaps remain ─ the new homicide squad does not have a budget.

Officers should receive Rs50,000 per investigation to cover the cost of transport, equipment and forensic tests. The senior police official in Lahore says the stipend had been paid in around 40-45 per cent of cases.

One newly appointed homicide officer ─ a veteran stationed outside Lahore ─ says he only had 25 days of extra training and had not been paid investigation expenses.

"We are in favour of this initiative, but if they don't do it properly, it will just be old wine in new bottles," warned another Punjabi policeman, himself a seasoned investigator.

Problems and solutions

A tiny national police budget leaves little cash for training and witness protection.

"In Pakistan, most of the time, the natural witnesses don't come forward. Even where the natural witnesses are available, police have to guide them on how they are supposed to testify," says Sukhera.

One method several police officers say was used in Punjab to bolster their case was to buy a gun, shoot a few rounds then place the bullets at a crime scene. When the suspect is captured, the gun is planted.

The Punjab Forensic Science Agency (PFSA), which carries out tests for police, says around 70pc of guns taken from suspects match bullets from crime scenes.

The senior police officer says the match rate from genuine evidence is closer to 5pc.

Even if the new unit is successful in Punjab, some killers will still walk free under Islamic laws passed in 1990 that allow pardons for cash.

Last year, courts in Punjab ─ Pakistan's biggest and richest province ─ issued judgements on 3,543 murder cases.

Of this number, 23pc were guilty verdicts, 30pc were acquittals and 46pc ended in a deal.

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