Though the capital police go after narcotics and liquor dens very sparingly, they now seem handicapped to proceed against peddlers and bootleggers even after catching them.

Officials in the police on condition of anonymity told Dawn that there were narcotics and liquor dens in different parts of the city but the police never dared to lay hands on their operators as they were backed by influential people.

The police work was further crippled with the closing down of a chemical examiner’s laboratory in Rawalpindi city from where they used to get the recovered contraband checked and obtain an authenticity certificate.

Under the law, the police have to produce in the court the authenticity certificate stating that the substance recovered from a suspect was indeed narcotics or liquor. Without that document, the arrested person cannot be convicted.

In the past, the police used to get the recovered contraband tested from the branch office of the chemical examiner at the Benazir Bhutto Hospital in Rawalpindi. However, in June this year, the facility was closed for the capital police. Now the police have to take samples to the chemical examiner in Lahore paying an extra fee of Rs5,000 for testing of each sample besides bearing transportation charges.

Surprisingly, the police have no separate fund to bear expense incurred on the process to get the certificate and the officials who make the arrest have to bear the cost on their own.

Besides, the process to get the certificate is lengthy and time consuming. The capital police have therefore started avoiding getting into the process and prefer not to arrest any suspected peddler and bootlegger.

Some senior officers in the capital police expressed the fear that the development could breed more corruption in the force. Those who are neither involved in corruption nor willing to pay the fee from their own pockets will prefer not to arrest the peddlers and bootleggers, they added.

Senior officers at the Central Police Office were approached by the station house officers and other supervisory officers to readdress the issue but to no avail.

It may be noted that Islamabad is considered a gateway for narcotics smugglers from KP to Punjab. Majority of the peddlers and smugglers use the route through Islamabad’s Golra and Tarnol areas. Most of the investigators have already informed their supervisory officers that they would not register a case on the recovery of liquor.

There have also been instances in which the police made recoveries from different peddlers and bootleggers but registered a combined FIR against all of them.

A police officer arrested two narcotics peddlers from Tarnol a few days ago but instead of presenting the contraband separately, turned it into one sample. “I could not arrange the Rs10,000 for testing the two samples separately,” the police official who arrested the suspects told his senior officers.

The police officers said during the last three months the number of arrests and recoveries had sharply decreased.

In August, a summary was moved from the office of the Assistant Inspector General of Police operation to the Ministry of Interior to either reserve funds for the process or get the facility of chemical examiner at the BBH restored. However, so far no action has been made on the summary.

An official at the chemical examiner laboratory in Lahore, on condition of anonymity, told Dawn that the services were closed for the capital police on the direction of the director general of the laboratory. “The Rawalpindi branch has no modern facilities while the Lahore laboratory has modern and sophisticated equipment,” he added.

Published in Dawn, September 29th , 2014