LAHORE, Feb 15: A diamond necklace stolen from a stall in the India Show on Feb 12 and recovered by police in two days was handed over to its owner, Kamal Kant Kulathia, on Wednesday.
Senior Superintendent of Police Investigation Abdul Razzaque Cheema handed over the necklace and two earrings worthRs700,000 to Mr Kulathia at his Qila Gujjar Singh investigation headquarters office.
Kulathia, one of the owners of ND Diamonds (Indian company), thanked the Pakistani government for the recovery.
Suspect Shakeel Jameel, of Sheikhupura, is with the investigation police on a four-day physical remand.
CIA SP Capt Liaquat Ali (retired) says they solved the case in a day by involving their strong network of informers who led to the arrest of the accused. The case was a challenge for the police because the country’s reputation was at stake, he said.
He claimed there was not a single country where 100 per cent of cases were traced.
The Indian trader is lucky to have recovered its stolen property in two days, but Muhammad Munir and his brother Muhammad Naeem are not. The brothers lost Rs7 million prize bonds in broad daylight and were injured by robbers outside the State Bankon Tuesday (Feb 14).
Police are still looking for clues in their search for the robbers.
Police showed Munir a CCTV footage to identify suspects on Wednesday. Though the footage did not help him spot the robbers, he said, he was satisfied for the time being with police investigation. In a pessimistic tone, he said getting back the stolen money seemed impossible in the country.
Several hundreds of robbery victims in the city have yet to see any development in their cases by the police. Official figures available with Dawn say the Lahore investigation police solved only 33 per cent of heinous crime cases (14,335 cases) in 2011 and their performance in crime against property even remained below 30 per cent.
The crime against property includes dacoity or robbery with murder, dacoity, robbery, car-snatching, other vehicles snatching, car theft, other vehicle theft, motorcycle snatching and motorcycle theft. On average such 50 cases are reported in the city.
Case trace and recovery ratio of the investigation police is also dismally low as investigators focus only on high-profile cases.
A senior police investigator says trained investigation officers are not available. He said recoveries made by police in crime against property are hardly handed over to the victims.
He said the commoners’ cases did not get police attention because of suo moto by courts, cases of high-profile figures, organisations and foreigners as police would use its resources to high profile cases.
SSP Investigation Abdul Razzaque Cheema says challan ratio in crime against property cases is not more than 35 per cent annually.
He said around 800 investigators of Lahore investigated around 64,000 cases with average of 80 cases per officer in a year making it difficult for them focus on all cases.
“We can improve the tracing and challan ratio of such cases with an increase in investigation officers,” he said.