What’s in a name? Everything for the CIA, terror of terrors

SIU becomes CIA that will control AVCC, ACLC.

KARACHI:

Even though years had passed since it was closed down, police wallahs continued to use the three small letters — C. I. A. — to get the job done, so absolute was this agency’s reputation as a terror bigger than the terrorists. And now, with the Sindh government’s sweeping administrative changes, the Criminal Investigation Agency is back.

The Special Investigation Unit (SIU) has been abolished and its men will now be part of the rejuvenated CIA that will be headed by a DIG. There will be no major changes in its working or funding. Just think that the name has changed. But so powerful was the name of the CIA that decades later, the SIU that did the same job, never quite managed to ratchet up the same kind of street cred.

“The name is enough,” growled SSP Chaudhry Aslam Khan, who was associated with the unit in the past. “CIA is terror itself. This is the name that makes the biggest of criminals quake in their shoes.”

Two additional police cells, the Anti-Violent Crime Cell (AVCC) and the Anti-Car Lifting Cell (ACLC) will begin operating under the CIA DIG. Three SPs or SSPs will head the CIA, AVCC and ACLC. However, the department’s DIG will operate under the Additional Inspector General (AIG).

Sources said that with the repeal of Police Order 2002, the investigation wing of the police is going to be eliminated. The decision to restore the CIA was taken at a meeting chaired by IGP Wajid Ali Durrani at Central Police Office, and the minutes of the meeting have been sent to Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah.

The CIA was set up in the 1960s but its name was repeatedly changed — to the Karachi Range Investigation Cell (KRIC), Homicide Investigation Cell (HIC), Anti-Dacoity and Robbery Cell (ADRC) and finally the SIU. The institution was headed by SSP Manzoor Mughal before it was dissolved in 2000.

The CIA effectively dealt with crime across the city and also played a pivotal role in the operation against the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) during the 1990s. It was wrapped up partly because of links to the death in custody of a man called Fasih Jugnoo.

Officers the likes of SSP Raja Omer Khattab became part of the SIU which also took on other ex-CIA men — the city’s top brass such as DIG Samiullah Marwat, Chaudhry Aslam Khan, Fayyaz Khan, Zeeshan Kazmi, Sarwar Commando, Ali Raza.

The CIA used to have the power to register First Information Reports (FIRs) but this power was taken away while it was still functioning. However, the SIU was authorised to register FIRs and thus the reborn CIA will also retain this authority.

DIG Iftikhar Tarar told The Express Tribune that everything, including the budget, funding, operations and functions, will remain the same. He was waiting for the notification to join his new post. Khattab was happy with the change and said that he had worked hard while serving the SIU and would continue to do the same in the CIA.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 14^th, 2011.