Govt to launch crackdown on dacoits in katcha areas

Law and order meeting in the next few days to finalise strategy for operation

KARACHI: Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah has decided to launch a vigorous operation against bandits in the katcha areas of Sukkur and Larkana divisions where cases of kidnapping for ransom are on the rise.

The CM took this decision on Thursday while going through police reports filed in his secretariat. He also called Chief Secretary Mumtaz Shah and Home Secretary Kazi Kabir to discuss the proposed operation, besides directing them to summon a law and order meeting so that the planning and strategy for the operation could be finalised.

The chief minister said that kidnapping for ransom was a heinous crime and could not be tolerated. Some bandits have established their hideouts in the katcha areas of Larkana, Sukkur, Khairpur and Nawabshah and are carrying out their illicit operations through accomplices in the cities.

He said that the operation would not be limited to the katcha area from Shaheed Benazirabad to Kashmore, but would also be directed towards the dacoits’ facilitators.

The chief minister said that he was convening a high-level law and order meeting within the next few days to finalise the strategy for the proposed operation in consultation with the Police IG and other relevant officers.

The CM has already directed the police chief to recover kidnapped persons from the clutches of the dacoits. “I will not tolerate the emergence of dacoit factor in the province again,” he said.

Shah said that the overall law and order situation in Sindh was satisfactory but the emerging issues of kidnappings for ransom and street crimes in Karachi have become new challenges. The Karachi Additional IG was working to crush street criminals while the operation against bandits in northern and central parts of Sindh was the need of the hour.

The targeted operation launched against drug peddlers, terrorists and other outlaws is successful so far, in which the police, Rangers and intelligence agencies are working hard, said the chief minister, adding that a similar operation was on the cards against dacoits in katcha areas.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 30^th, 2019.