KARACHI, Nov 30: A spokesman for the Sindh police has clarified that 41 cases of kidnapping were registered this year, and not 36 cases as reported in Dawn on November 29.

In a statement issued here on Tuesday, he said that 25 of the cases pertained to kidnapping-for-ransom. Twenty-four of them were solved and the captives recovered, he added.

He said that 17 of the captives were recovered without payment of ransom and in one of these cases, a hostage was killed during encounter with the kidnappers. He said that 24 kidnappers were arrested and six of them convicted. He put the number of the kidnappers killed during encounters at three.

The spokesman refuted the claim that three robberies were being committed every hour. During the current year, the average crime pertaining to dacoity and robbery was 16 cases per day which included snatching of cars and motorcycles.

With regard to the performance of the Anti-Violent Crime Cellhe said that the cell, with the help of CPLC was able to arrest one, Rustam, a key operator of the notorious gang of kidnappers led by Haji Mashooq Brohi. Another seven members of the gang were arrested by the AVCC in collaboration with the CPLC during the year 2003 and 2004, he added.

However, police sources claimed that the AVCC was working in close liaison with the CPLC as all the expertise and equipment of the CPLC was being used. The arrest of Rustam and seven members of the Brohi gang came into effect on the information provided by the CPLC, and there was no significant role played by the AVCC in the arrests, the sources pointed out.

According to the police statistics, a total of 31 cases of kidnapping-for- ransom, 557 cases of kidnapping with other motives and 75 cases of child-lifting were registered during the January-October period this year.

The sources pointed out that police always appeared reluctant in registering FIRs. In the recent incident of theft at the house of Hina Durrani, daughter of the late Madam Noor Jahan, the police registered the FIR after a delay of two days.

The police statistics showed that a total of 7,661 cases of robberies, dacoities and theft were reported this year and they included car and motorcycle snatching. The data also revealed that an average of 25 cases of robberies, dacoities and theft in a day were registered. This shows that at least one such incident took place every hour during the past 10 months.

The statistics did not include the incidents the FIRs of which were not registered. The number could be in thousands as people would generally avoid going to a police station to get an FIR registered.

The police data of crime during last year, shows that the total number of robberies and theft, which include robberies, car/motorcycle snatching, wire theft, cycle theft, etc., stood at 13,825, which reflects that three persons were robbed of their belongings every two hours.