ISLAMABAD Police are enjoying high praise for recovering the city's famous bookseller Mohammad Yousuf and arresting his kidnappers. But the more lasting impression the success left on the minds of the grateful citizens was that police can bust crime when they really want to.

It is not for nothing that the public suspect police are not always true to their motto: “It is our duty to serve you”. Just take three recent incidents that show the city police had been selective in serving the citizens.

Last March, Koral police did not believe a lowly pizza delivery boy when he reported that he had been robbed of his mobile, cash and motorcycle by the people who had ordered Rs1,600 worth of pizza for delivery.

It took the victim Saleem Akhtar of Italian Pizza two months of knocking at the doors of senior police officers to get Koral police register his complaint finally on May 25.

That would be counted a success for the poor delivery boy when the law gives the right to every citizen to go to police with any complaint and binds the police to register it.

But the chances of further progress in his case look dim as the suspicions which made Koral police refuse to register his case still linger. They think the boy had made up the story that he could not find the address where he had to deliver the pizza on March 24 night and called the man who had ordered it who guided him to a lonely street in the Al Huda Colony where four men were waiting for him when he reached there and robbed him of all his things at gunpoint.

According to the Koral police, there were neither any eyewitnesses to the crime, nor Saleem gave them the cellphone number he called nor cooperated in drawing the sketches of the alleged robbers. But the very next month, the police came across a case in which such data was available and still the police won't act because “influential people” were involved in it.

The case concerned the Bhara Kahu police intercepting a car transporting illicit liquor on April 21. A man, call him MA, and linked to businesses in the United Kingdom and a duty-free shop in Islamabad, was arrested, along with his brother and father, on the strength of interrogation of one of the occupants of the car.

A family member of MA sought help of a senior superintendent of police who reached Bhara Kahu police station, along with the SP City.

On their questioning RZ, the man who  had stated that the illicit cargo belonged to MA revealed that it was all a plot staged by an officer of the Bhara Kahu police station and a business partner of MA with the help of an inspector of police of the same station to snare MA and share the loot of his Rs750 million business.

That revelation gained MA and his father and brother freedom. RZ was arrested and a case was registered against him - but not against the alleged plotters.

While the senior police officer of Bhara Kahu emerged scot-free, his inspector was suspended - only to be posted to a higher position three weeks later. That may be shocking to the common man but not even a surprise in the police ranks. However, not all hope is lost. In March this year, a superintendent of police tracked down a long sought fraudster, ST, in a jiffy whom the Kohsar police had for six long years been reporting “untraceable”.

Police sources say the SP simply traced out ST's cellphone number with the help of his CNIC number and knocked at his door to answer for robbing pious people of millions of rupees for arranging Haj visas for them.