A man was arrest and charged of a crime early last year. Dumped into jail, he rotted there for a year because the police did not submit the challan to the courts.

In the absence of a challan, an accused cannot seek bail and is detained in the jail without a single hearing.

The hapless man approached the Supreme Court this year and in early July the court took note of the issue.

Apart from urging the capital police to address the delays in the submission of challans (FIR, progress report of case and investigation report) in trial courts, the SC also asked for details about the challans pending with investigators.

According to senior police officers, challan of a case should be submitted to the court within 14 days after the First Information Report has been registered. This rarely happens.

The absence of challans creates problems for the accused. Because they cannot approach the courts for bail, those arrested are stuck in jail for months on end – without a single hearing.

It is not only the innocent who suffer thus. Those accused of minor crimes end up serving longer periods than the maximum punishments for the crimes they had committed.

Police officers offer multiple reasons for the delay — overworked officers, lack of training of investigators for doing the paperwork for the challan and so on.

In fact, say police officers, the lack of training means that a large number of challans are returned by the prosecution department because they are either incomplete or have not been completed properly.

Problems also crop up because rules are violated. For instance, the investigating officers are supposed to submit the challan to an officer at their relevant police station, who then passes it on to the Station House Officer who submits it to the Sub-Divisional Police officer. The latter is supposed to pass the challan to the prosecution department.

But in practice the investigation officer directly submits the challan with the SHO or the SDPO and at times even to the prosecution department. This means that the various filters, which are meant to ensure the veracity of the documents, are bypassed.

However, since the court order, the police department has been trying to get its act together.

Police officers met on July 13 and ordered investigators to complete probe of all pending cases within 14 days and submit challans at the relevant courts.

The IGP asked for an interim report on the issue within three days.

As a result, Senior Superintendent of Police Tahir Alam Khan informed the IGP that he and the Zonal Superintendents of Police had issued show cause notices to 250 officials for not submitting challans as well as taking disciplinary action against 70 police officers.

As police officials scrambled to gather details, they discovered that out of 1001 cases, 350 were still pending in the city zone that comprises Aabpara, Kohsar, Secretariat and Bhara Kahu police stations. In the Saddar zone, which comprises Shalimar, Margalla, Golra and Tarnol police stations, 530 cases out of 1375 were pending.

In the rural zone – Shahzad Town, Nilor, Koral and Sihala police station — 238 out of 927 were pending and 150 out of 744 in the Industrial Area zone – Industrial Area and Sabzi Mandi police station.

However despite its efforts, the police managed to complete and submit challans of only 466 out of the total 1,268 pending cases by July 27: the City Zone submitted 124 challans, Saddar 146, Rural Zone 130 and the Industrial area 66 in the relevant courts during the period.

The department claims that they have spared investigating officers from other work so they can focus on getting the challans completed. “Now the investigating officers are exclusively working on the investigations; they should be able to complete 50-60 cases instead of the 25 to 30 cases they managed earlier,” an official told Dawn.

It remains to be seen if the department can live up to this promise.