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KARACHI, July 21: The Sindh police force considers disbanding the specialised Anti-Car Lifting Cell (ACLC) after terming its performance unsatisfactory.
Well-placed sources in the police department confided to Dawn that a meeting chaired by the Inspector-General of the Sindh Police, Maj (retd) Ziaul Hasan, was held a couple of days ago in which the police chief expressed his dissatisfaction over the fact that the ACLC’s vehicle recovery rate stood at five per cent.
Senior police officers close to the meeting’s participants quoted the provincial police chief as saying: “The ACLC’s task is to recover stolen vehicles and hand them over to the owners. If the ACLC cannot perform its duty, it should be disbanded.”
Attempts were made to contact the IG Sindh but he was not available for comment.
On the condition of anonymity, the officials told Dawn that that the DIGs attending the meeting asked the IG Sindh to reorganise the ACLC’s responsibilities and give it time to prove its worth. They suggested that the decision to disband the cell should be taken if it fails again, and sources say that Maj (retd.) Hasan agreed.
According to data compiled jointly by the ACLC and the Citizen-Police Liaison Committee (CPLC), a sharp rise of 15.84 per cent has occurred in the snatching or theft of motorcycles between January to June this year, when compared to the corresponding period last year.
An overall increase of 10.3 per cent in carjacking was witnessed during the same period this year, as compared to the corresponding span of time in 2006, since 6,151 vehicles stolen in the first six months of 2007 while 5,517 vehicles were stolen between January and June 2006. Similarly, 3,856 motorcycles were either snatched or stolen in the first half of this year while 3,245 vehicles were taken away in the first half of 2006.
Police sources explained that the ACLC was established to investigate cases of carjacking and motorcycle lifting. It is headed by a senior superintendent of the police who works under the command of the DIG Investigations. However, said the sources, the ACLC was pressurised by successive commanders to prevent these crimes, a duty that in fact lies with the operations branch of the district police.
Official sources said that the sanctioned strength of the ACLC is almost 850 officials but it has never worked at full strength since its establishment. It had to make do with 350 officials who had to cover all the city’s many exit and entry routes to check whether stolen vehicles were being taken outside Karachi. There are 27 known routes of which three are metalled roads and the rest are dirt-tracks. The ACLC has always been a neglected wing of the Sindh police force, commented the sources.
Sources also blamed unsatisfactory performance on the lack of coordination between the ACLC and the operations branch of the district police, shortage of vehicles and manpower, and a lack of interest shown by the police hierarchy. Other than the ACLC, district police officials and Rangers’ personnel also appear helpless in the face of car-jacking incidents, which in some cases have led to major crimes. A case in point is a car stolen on July 10 from the parking lot of the Dolmen Shopping Mall, which was found laden with two bombs on July 20 near the Park Towers parking lot. The stolen car had been moving freely in the city for ten days but had not been noticed by law enforcement agencies that had been put on high alert after the Lal Masjid operation. A grave incident was averted only because of information given to the police by an anonymous caller.
