Pakistan Rangers Sindh have recommended that the authorities should register cases against street criminals under terror charges to eliminate this menace, officials said on Saturday.

Colonel Qaiser Khattak of the Rangers made these suggestions while giving a detailed briefing to an apex committee meeting about the street crimes.

Rangers spokesperson on Saturday said that the apex committee meeting was informed that the street crimes mostly tended to take place at rush spots while during rainy season, the street crimes took place at different places.

Street crimes mostly took place when the vehicles were at halt or time of dropping the passengers/people from the vehicles.

According to the Rangers' analysis of street crimes, “One of the major factors behind street crimes are traffic jams that occur due to protests triggered over shortage of water, power and other basic facilities.”

“Street crimes mostly take place in the areas where load-shedding is rampant,” the analysis further brought to light.

There are 661 spots in the city where 2841 cameras have been installed out of them, 250 such cameras are not functioning properly, said the Rangers official.

More street crimes take place in the areas which are not covered by CCTV cameras.

There are at least 80,000 drug addicts in Karachi and 70 per cent street criminals are drug addicts, according to the Colonel Khattak.

According to the Rangers report about street crimes, University Road remained under-construction for six months, which caused traffic jams on adjoining roads and wherever traffic jams occurred, complaints about street crimes emerged there.

“Street crimes also took place owing to car parking mafia as wrong parking facilitated the criminals to commit the crimes,” believed the paramilitary force.

“Street crimes would not be reduced till the criminals were not awarded strict punishment,” the Rangers official noted.

Col Khattak informed the apex committee participants that the shopkeepers in mobile markets are the ‘biggest facilitators’ of the street criminals as such shopkeepers buy stolen or snatched cell phones.

“Major reason behind bank robberies is non-compliance of the regulations of the State Bank of Pakistan.”

People drawing money from ATMs are looted and no criminal commits crimes without back-up, he added.

Rangers also suggested installing CCTVs at markets where parts of snatched or stolen motorbikes and cars were being sold in order to curb such crimes.

The apex committee was informed that the paramilitary force has so far arrested 828 street criminals as Rangers tended to hold snap checking at over 500 places in the metropolis besides deployment.

Rangers also maintained that a strong network of the terrorists and criminal groups was being run through Central Prison.

It was pointed out that since start of an city-wide operation in 2013, Rangers have arrested over 7,500 suspects who were handed over to the police for further legal action but out of them only 400 have been convicted by the courts.