LAHORE, March 19: District Police Officer Javed Noor told the district council on Tuesday that the facility to lodge a first information report by internet would become available soon.

The announcement came during a briefing at the Jinnah Hall. The DIG said that the proforma for lodging the FIR would be available on the police website on the internet. Police officials, he said, had clear instructions to register FIRs without delay and not to summon or arrest anybody until a case had been registered.

He believed that the police reluctance in respect of registering the FIRs would end as a result of the division of the force into investigation, watch and ward and prosecution wings. Separate centres, he said, had now been set up for investigation and those responsible for registration of cases were not responsible for investigation.

He said that the Punjab cabinet would discuss a draft of amendments in the Police Act, 1861, on Wednesday. An ordinance based on the amendments could be promulgated on March 23.

The DPO said that the false complaints could be curbed by making the punishment for lodging false complaints commensurate with the nature of the punishment prescribed for the allegations in such complaints.

He said that the weakness of the provision about false prosecution was the root cause of the abundance of false complaints. The maximum punishment prescribed, he said, was imprisonment for three months. Also, he said, he had never seen anyone being convicted of the offence during his 25 years in police.

Mr Noor said that illegal detention and other irregularities were being checked. Out of a force of 98,000, he said, 4,000 police officials involved in serious irregularities had been removed from service in one year.

He said Lahore was so far the only city in the Punjab having its own police. Rawalpindi, Multan, Gujranwala and Faisalabad, he said, were likely to follow it in this respect. He said that the police could now reach the scene of crime within seven minutes of receiving a complaint by telephone.

For the first time, he said, 625 investigation officers and 1,260 subordinates were not being deployed for the Ashura duties. During a fortnight, he said, they had completed investigation of 78 cases submitted the challans before the courts. An investigation officer, he said, would probe 40 to 50 cases in a year or around four cases in a month. Previously an investigating officer could have hundreds of cases awaiting disposal while he performed the watch and ward and prosecution duties.

He said that a prosecution service was being established, possibly under the Law Department.