KARACHI: The police complaint centres, set up across Sindh on the directives of the Supreme Court to ease burden on the district judiciary pertaining to matters of civil nature and complaints regarding police behaviour, have received more than 16,000 complaints between January and June, it emerged on Tuesday.

Most complaints were related to disputes and undesirable attitude of police with the general public.

According to the police’s data reviewed by Dawn, there were a total of 16,162 complaints during the six-month period. Of them, 8,483 cases were disposed of while 7,679 cases were still pending.

A total of 7,679 complaints are still pending disposal; 622 relate to corruption of police officers

Sources said that more than 1,500 complaints were registered against police and in over 450 of them law enforcers were found to have been involved in turning away the people who came to police stations for registration of FIRs.

“Interestingly there are also complaints of criminal activities of policemen in different parts of the province,” said a source citing the data. “Total 183 complaints were received regarding involvement of policemen in criminal activities.”

Corruption in police

Another issue which is quite rampant in the police department and often referred to as the root cause of all ills is corruption. “During the six-month period, the complaint cells received total 622 complaints regarding alleged corruption of police officers and personnel,” the source added.

More than 35 police complaint cells have been established in Sindh on Supreme Court’s orders. The centres work at police range or district levels, where SSPs and DSPs have been posted to perform duty to address peoples’ grievances.

Inspector General of Police Dr Kaleem Imam had issued clear directives that he would not tolerate complaints regarding denial of FIRs or use of delaying tactics by police.

“There would be no place in the police department for such officers who would refuse to lodge an FIR or adopt delaying tactics,” the source quoted IGP as telling his subordinates during a recent meeting to review the performance of the police complaint centres.

“There is a consensus in the police hierarchy that registration of FIRs is imperative in order to eliminate crimes and take criminals to task through effective investigation,” he said. “The complaint mechanism will not only be linked with the IG Office/CPO in Karachi, but it will also be linked online with the judiciary. Police officers should not think that the crime graph will go up and questions will be raised about their performance if they register all FIRs.”

IGP gets 871 complaints on personal number

Meanwhile, a statement issued by the Sindh police said that IGP Imam had received around 871 complaints on his personal number during the last 287 days.

A police spokesperson said that these complaints were sent by the public from different areas of Sindh between October 5, 2018 and July 15, 2019.

“Of the total complaints, as many as 461 were immediately referred to officials concerned including for taking appropriate steps to resolve them,” he said.

Published in Dawn, July 17th, 2019