Provincial police chief Syed Kamal Shah had announced in April last that FIR forms were available at all the post offices in the city so that people could lodge complaints with police easily and without any fear of being extorted or subjected to unnecessary formalities.
“We have introduced this procedure since February (2002) and have received a positive response from people,” he had claimed later.
However, the Post Master General, Sindh, Mohammad Ahmed Mian disputed the police claim revealing that no such forms were made available to any of the post offices in the city over the past six months.
“No meeting in this respect has ever been convened to evolve a procedure for providing FIR forms to the people,” he added.
Senior Post Master Jalil Siddiqui told Dawn that a letter was issued by the Sindh home department more than six months back asking the postal department to cooperate with the police in using the post offices’ counters as easily accessible outlets of FIR forms for general public.
“We had been provided with a bunch of 25-30 photocopies of FIR forms each for the six major post offices — General Post Office (GPO) I. I. Chundrigar Road, GPO Hyderi, GPO New Town, GPO Korangi, GPO City, and GPO Saddar,” he said.
Mr Siddiqui said that the forms were given away to the people after noting down name and address of every recipient. “We are neither informed of the procedure nor directed to collect the forms duly filled-in by the people. We don’t know whether the completed forms are supposed to be submitted at post office counters or police stations.
“We were expecting that printed FIR forms with serial numbers would now be provided by the police. However, no police official has yet turned up with more forms. Nor has any official tried to hold a meeting with postal department officials on how to manage public dealing in this regard.”
After the first stock of duplicate forms exhausted, the post offices are running out of the stock and no fresh stock has landed at any post office over the past six months.
Many people have expressed their disappointment over non-availability of FIR forms at any post office.
According to the IG’s announcement, a complainant could fill-in the form and dispatch it to the concerned police station for an action. The police were supposed to register an FIR and intimate the sender.
A complainant, who was robbed of his cash and belongings on Tariq Road, said the procedure, if implemented, might benefit the complainants as they could obtain an FIR form easily and get an FIR registered without proceeding to a police station. “However, I visited three major post offices and found that none of them had the forms available with them. The concerned police officials also declined to register an FIR. Later, the same was registered when I used influence,” he added.
Police had taken another decision, about registering FIRs pertaining to all major crimes — murder, robbery, carjacking, etc. — to ensure no botherance to the aggrieved party. The decision was taken at a meeting presided over by Syed Kamal Shah on Feb 8, 2002, at the office of the DIG (Operations), Karachi.
After the meeting, Mr Shah had told Dawn the same day: “We are taking this step in the interest of people as it would help solve the problems related to the registration of cases.”
Giving an instance, he had pointed out that a police officer had responded to a complaint in a carjacking case and asked the person about the details of the incident. The complainant was surprised to see the police at his doorstep.
Since February 2002, police have quoted no other such instance where an FIR is registered at the doorstep of a complainant. It is common observation such examples must have been of those who possessed or able to apply some sort of influence while the common man cannot get an FIR registered even after visiting a police station many a times.
Usually, a complainant is not believed to be fortunate enough that police visit the person’s place. Rather, police often order the aggrieved party to appear before the concerned police official for the registration of an FIR.
In one such example, a newly-married man had parked his motorcycle in the charged-parking area of a market in Hyderi on Jummatul Wida. On his return, he found the vehicle missing and reported the matter to the North Nazimabad police on Nov 21.
The police made an entry in the roznamcha (diary). A couple of days later, he visited the police station again to lodge an FIR, but the officials there demanded Rs3,000 to register the FIR. The dejected man had to use influence and, resultantly, the FIR was registered ‘at his doorstep’. In the following days, the police succeeded in recovering chassis of his motorbike and he was advised to complete legal formalities to take possession of the recovered part of the vehicle.