K & P

Loose cannons: Fourth Schedulers under lax scrutiny

Most Peshawar police stations unable to keep tabs

Riaz Ahmad January 31, 2017

When contacted, Khanpur police station SHO Khan Afsar denied all charges. PHOTO: AFP

PESHAWAR: Most, if not all, police stations in the Peshawar district lack a mechanism to keep track of all suspects on the Fourth Schedule list, a police official told The Express Tribune on Monday.

Names of at least 452 suspects are included in the list compiled under the Fourth Schedule of the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1997 in the district. All of these suspects are required to regularly submit fresh photos and inform the police about their exact whereabouts.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that most of the police stations in Peshawar’s rural areas, where Da’ish recently made inroads and its members were reportedly involved in a number of terrorist attacks, including targeted killings, were without a proper mechanism to keep a check on 4th schedulers.

“First of all, the procedure for including people on the suspect list is highly questionable … No one knows about the (exact) procedure but once suspects are added to the list, there is no mechanism to keep the suspects under watch,” he said, adding that some police officials were not even aware of it.

“A suspect is required to (regularly) visit police station every 15 days and submit fresh pictures. Putting people on the watch list is futile if there is no check on them and they (are able to) move around freely,” he said, adding that the newly-formed City Patrol Force had been assigned to keep watch over the Fourth Schedulers, but this had not yet been extended to rural areas of Peshawar.

The highest number of suspects on the watch-list belongs to the banned Sipah-e-Sahaba/Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (203) followed by the defunct TTP (189) and Jaish-e-Muhammad/ Khudamul Islam (10).

There are 32 Tehreek-e-Jafria/Sipah-e-Muhammad suspects in the district along with four suspects who were repatriated from Afghanistan while 14 of them are hardcore criminals.

Another police official, however, said that police stations inside the city had been provided with complete addresses of all Forth Schedulers, but City Patrol was now assigned the duty to keep a check on them.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 31^st, 2017.