ISLAMABAD: Critic­ising the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) for police performance in Sindh and Punjab, Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) chairman Imran Khan has insisted that the provinces should reform their policing system following Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s example.

The police reforms introduced in KP have been the focus of Mr Khan’s speeches and conversations at all recent public meetings and press conferences, indicating that the party intends to use the issue during its campaign for the upcoming polls.

Talking to the media in Karachi on Saturday, Mr Khan lambasted his arch rivals the PPP and the PML-N for allegedly using police for political gains.

The PTI chief claimed that the people of KP had confidence in their police due to the reforms introduced by the party’s government. This was evident, he said, from the fact that the father of Asma — a minor girl who was found murdered in Mardan — did not seek the army chief’s help for tracing the culprits.

Mr Khan insisted that the police in Sindh and Punjab needed a Police Act like the one enforced by the KP government.

Though Mr Khan has been criticising the Punjab police for the Model Town 2014 incident — where 14 activists of the Pakistan Awami Tehreek were killed in police firing — it is perhaps due to the recent public outrage against the police following incidents of child abuse in Punjab and the controversy over fake encounters in Sindh that the PTI chief has turned to police reforms for political sloganeering.

Before leaving for Karachi, the PTI chief shared data on Twitter about KP’s crime rate, claiming that there was a 20 per cent decrease in the crime rate since 2014.

“(The) KP government has brought down crime in the province by freeing police from any political interference and selection based on merit through the NTS,” Mr Khan tweeted.

In the same tweet, the PTI chief attached a chart containing statistics of the provincial government which show a drastic decrease in the crime incidents.

According to the statistics, 3,253 murder cases were reported in 2014 which were reduced to 2,402 with 26pc reduction.

Similarly, in 2014, as many as 3,178 incidents of attempted murder were reported but the number reduced to 2,601 in 2017.

In the year 2014, 110 cases of kidnapping for ransom were registered and the number has now come down to a mere 20, showing 82pc decline.

Published in Dawn, January 29th, 2018