Lahore Police investigation wing faces neglect

There is even lack of basic furniture for officers to carry out their routine work

LAHORE: The investigation wing of Lahore Police has been a victim of neglect over the last ten years. Neither have authorities concerned paid attention towards the wing nor have they provided new facilities such as vehicles or a building.

Only 2,000 enquiry officers have been appointed and each enquiry officer is tasked to resolve at least 90 cases under investigation. This creates problems for complainants too who face difficulties due to systemic delays.

Punjab police was divided into two parts in the year 2002. The first part was assigned the name Operations Wing while the second part was assigned the name Investigation Wing. The command of both wings was handed over to the capital city chief police officer.

Lahore is divided into six divisions under DIG operations and SSP operations under the Operations Wing. The deployment of divisional SPs on the wing’s monitoring has made the SHOs of the police stations subordinate to them.

The operational responsibilities of the wing include control of law and order situation of the city, prevention of crime through crime fighting, protecting the lives and property of the citizens and arresting criminals. The operations wing registers case on the request of the complainants after confirmation of the incident.

Once the complaint is registered, the investigation wing takes the responsibility to investigate the incident and hold custody of the accused until her or his punishment is concluded in the case.

Similar to the operations wing, the investigation wing has six SPs that are subordinate to the DIG and the SSP and long with SHOs in the police station, in charge investigations are deployed to them.

In the last 10 years, special attention was paid to the operations wing of police by former governments. New buildings were constructed for police stations. The police were provided with new mobile vans for patrolling, operations room, front desk, PRU and Dolphin Force. Modern weapons were also provided. During the same period, the investigation wing was not provided with any of these facilities.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 24^th, 2019.