KARACHI: The Sindh police have decided to establish a ‘desk’ at the (police) range, zonal and district levels in order to address complaints of high-handedness on the part of various elements against minority communities, a senior official said on Tuesday.

The additional inspector general (AIG) operations has directed DIGs of all districts in the interior of Sindh as well as zonal DIGs in Karachi to dedicate a special team for their respective areas.

According to a senior police official, the initiative is part of Inspector General Mushtaq Mahar’s reforms programme for the law-enforcement agency.

“All the DIGs have been asked to set up a desk within their respective area and also nominate its focal person, who will look after the desk’s affairs. The process is likely to be completed within a week,” the official said.

Each desk is supposed to address issues like forced conversion, religious provocation, honour killing, sexual assault, etc

He pointed out the minority communities would often come up with complaints of honour killing, sexual assaults, workplace harassment, forced conversion, hurting religious sentiments and other acts of rights violation.

“The desk will respond quickly on such complaints and ensure expeditious investigation into the cases,” said the official.

Under the same reforms programme, he recalled, the Sindh police had last year set up a human rights cell as its first initiative towards establishing a specialised unit to operate as a supervisory body responsible for addressing issues of human rights.

The specialised unit primarily deals with cases of rights violation involving women and children from vulnerable segments of society, especially minorities, as well as transgenders.

The fresh initiative of establishing the minorities’ desk would add value to the working of the human rights cell.

“I am directed to establish and nominate staff with focal person at the range, zonal and district levels to deal with minorities issues,” said the AIG operation’s letter addressed to DIGs.

“The facilitation desk would work round the clock for dealing with the issues/cases of minorities,” it said adding that the range/zone DIGs, district SSPs and the DSP/SDPO concerned would supervise and monitor performance of their respective desks, review their working and submit their reports on a fortnightly basis to this (AIG’s) office.

Published in Dawn, January 13th, 2021