PESHAWAR: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Inspector General of Police Moazzam Jah Ansari on Thursday said the province had approached the centre for signing an agreement with Afghanistan to crack down on extortion demands over phone from the Afghan soil.

“Afghan SIM cards are used in 99 per cent of phone calls made to Pakistanis to demand extortion. As Pakistan and Afghanistan have no agreement about it, we’ve formally requested the federal government to sign an accord with the Afghan government for action against these callers,” Mr Ansari told the ‘Meet the Press’ programme of the Peshawar Press Club here.

He said such calls were reported to the counter-terrorism department.

Mr Ansari also said since extortionists used Whatsapp, the government had planned to contact the operator of the mobile app for blocking those calls.

He also said the province had 129,000 police personnel and 26,500 of them were inducted from tribal districts.

The police chief said over 4,500 police personnel of the province were detailed to VVIPs and other people.

IGP says if govt orders, police to withdraw guards from Imran’s houses

He said the government was going to withdraw police guards from those, who were either not entitled to the facility or used the police security for “showoff.”

Mr Ansari said the province’s police had deployed around 60 personnel at PTI chief Imran Khan’s mansion in Islamabad’s Banigala area at the request of the relevant department and around 50 at his Zaman Park house in Lahore at the request of the Punjab government.

He said a similar procedure was required to be adopted to claim the police personnel back.

“The last Punjab government had requested the then KP government to depute police personnel at Zaman Park. They will be withdrawn whenever the Punjab government asks the KP government to do so,” he said.

The IGP said a similar communication was also required from the federal capital for the police’s withdrawal from Banigala.

He said the law and order situation in the province deteriorated after political and military changes in Afghanistan.

Mr Ansari said Pakistanis, who fought against the American and its allied forces in Afghanistan, returned after the US withdrawal from the country.

He said such people had weapons left behind by the US forces in Afghanistan.

The police chief said most militant attacks were carried out against police’s personnel, checkposts and stations in the province with the help of the latest weaponry.

He said until recently, the province’s police lacked modern weapons and ammunition to counter attacks by militants, who used modern war gadgets abandoned by the US and allied forces in Afghanistan.

Mr Ansari, however, said the police had got the latest weaponry.

“We have equipped the police in North and South Waziristan, Tank, Lakki Marwat, Dera Ismail Khan and Bannu districts with modern gadgets,” he said.

The IGP said the police were committed to fighting militants courageously.

Published in Dawn, January 27th, 2023