The Murree robberies

Dozens of vehicles and their passengers were looted in a highway robbery on 16 May

Reports are gradually emerging of a set of robberies in which dozens of vehicles and their passengers were looted in a highway robbery that lasted for most of the night on the 16^th/17^th May. They happened on the Rawalpindi-Murree-Kohala road a mere five kilometres from Mall Road, the hub around which Murree revolves. Travellers were heading to their native towns after the first sighting of the Ramazan moon and they were intercepted by a heavily armed gang of dacoits who stopped private vehicles as well as passenger vans and relieved the occupants of cash, jewellery, cell phones and anything else of value as vehicles formed a major traffic jam. The robbers operated between midnight and dawn and then disappeared, seemingly without trace.

What makes this case unusual is that it is far from unusual. Victims of the robbery have been unwilling to disclose their losses out of fear of the police, who are thought to be complicit in allowing the gang to operate. Not only that, there are now reliable reports that this is an annual event, and has been happening for several years, apparently unremarked. Cash and goods worth millions of rupees are being looted every year from innocent travellers who are left at the mercy of the robbers by a police force that is asleep at the wheel, and given the scale of the criminality involved must be at least turning a blind eye to a major crime. The men committing the crime will be local and in all likelihood known to the police and other security agencies as well. The current prime minister is local to the area and visits frequently his home village. The matter has been brought to his attention on a number of occasions as well as to the PML-N leadership.

That such large-scale robbery should go as a by-the-by is astonishing even in Pakistan, and is a copybook example of why there is so little faith in the forces of law and order more generally. On the one occasion when a suspect was caught he turned out to be a police officer and he was released. Volumes duly spoken.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 27^th, 2018.

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