SC wants details of action taken against senior cops with patchy service records

Provincial chief secretary told to present report by July 28

KARACHI: The Supreme Court (SC) asked on Wednesday the provincial chief secretary to present a report on what action was taken against the senior police officers who had patchy service records.

A three-judge bench, headed by Justice Mushir Alam, directed the top provincial bureaucrat to present the report by July 28 (tomorrow), showing action against police officers working in grade-17 and above.

The apex court's bench, which also comprised Justices Maqbool Baqar and Sajjad Ali Shah, was hearing a case regarding inaction against the police officials and officers, who were involved in criminal activities, but still enjoyed field postings without any departmental action taken against them. The case was heard at SC's Karachi Registry.



At the outset, the Additional IG (AIG) Sanaullah Abbasi, the head of the committee appointed by the SC to scrutinise the service records of the policemen, presented an interim report. He informed the bench that the committee had scrutinised the service records of 109,320 personnel so far. The report stated that 12,361 personnel were scrutinised over suspicion of having patchy records.

He informed the court that 352 police officials were recommended punishment for their patchy service records, while 1,182 were cleared of the suspicion of having patchy records. According to the AIG, 1,534 were summoned for personal hearing.

The AIG told the court that on recommendation of the committee, the competing authority had taken action against the personnel having patchy records after fulfilling codal formalities, such as issuing them show-cause notices and giving them second opportunity to defend themselves. So far, 17 officials have been dismissed from service, 122 sent on compulsory retirement while 11 officials opted for voluntary retirement.



The figures led the bench head, Justice Alam, to believe that law and order situation was not improving because more than 12,000 policemen themselves were involved in criminal activities.

Justice Shah inquired from the provincial Advocate-General (AG) Barrister Zamir Ghumro that why action was not being taken against senior police officers who were also involved in criminal activities. "We are aware of the game that's going on in the Sindh police," the judge said to the top government law officer, referring to inaction against the senior cops.

The bench members told the AG that such discrimination will not work anymore and the action was being taken only against the junior officers and seniors were spared. The irate bench members immediately summoned the provincial chief secretary to appear and explain to the court why senior officers were being spared. However, the AG informed the court that the chief secretary was on leave for personal engagements.



The bench directed the chief secretary to appear in the court along with a report, clearly showing what action the government had taken against the senior police officers who had patchy service records. The secretary will submit the report in two days and mention the action against the officers working in grade-17 and above.

Data computerisation of police

AIG Abbasi also informed that the Sindh government had approved the PC-I of Rs152.040 million project, computerisation of human resource of Sindh police. An amount of Rs50.209 million has been released for the first fiscal year, he added.

He said all the units of the police force had been provided with necessary hardware and software for the data entry under the project and DIG (IT) Sultan Ali Khowaja had been nominated as head of the project implementation committee.



AIG Abbasi maintained that the work is under way and after successful completion of the project the Sindh police will have computerised record of all police personnel. The IG Allah Dino Khawaja had issued directions to the heads of all units for compilation and provision of the service record in the shortest possible time, the officer informed the court, adding that so far record of 51,622 personnel had been computerised.

However, the AIG Abbasi sought more time to complete the huge task of scrutinising the police personnel, as the committee's members also had to perform their regularly assigned tasks in addition to scrutiny.