RAWALPINDI: Police continued its crackdown on the beggar mafia and arrested three more suspects for using four mentally-challenged persons, including a woman, for begging.

The three arrests were made on the basis of information provided by another suspect who was arrested on Sunday.

They had allegedly employed special persons and were using them for begging, a police spokesman said.

The spokesman said the mentally-challenged persons were identified as Hayat, Rashid, Murtaza and Fatima while the arrested suspects included Asif, Zafar and Shahid.

The police said efforts would be made to arrest more people involved in the illegal activity.

Citizens should keep an eye on such activities and report them to the police, said the spokesman.

The district and city traffic police already had intelligence and survey reports regarding the mafia operating in the garrison city under the nose of law enforcement officials for years. Many times in the past, anti-beggars squads were formed to eradicate the scourge of begging but to no avail.

In 2020, the City Traffic Police had claimed that more than 80 per cent beggars were professionals and operating in different parts of the city and of these 60pc were healthy, 20pc disabled while 20pc were drug addicts. They belonged to different areas of Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Sindh.

In the past, the police had also appealed to the citizens to refrain from giving alms to professional beggars to discourage them.

The beggars were allegedly being operated by two groups.

“The operators drop them at specific spots and pick them in the evening,” said a police official.

Published in Dawn, September 20th, 2022