Capital’s top cop replaced in new twist

K-P police chief appointed Islamabad IGP

ISLAMABAD:

The federal government has removed Islamabad Inspector General (IG) Aamir Zulfiqar from his post and appointed Qazi Jamilur Rehman as the new police chief of the federal capital on Wednesday.

According to the notification of Cabinet Secretariat Establishment Division, Qazi Jamilur Rehman, a BS-20 Officer of Police Service of Pakistan presently serving under Government of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, is transferred and posted as Inspector General, Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) Police, under Interior Division, in his own pay and scale, with immediate effect and until further orders.

Rehman has earlier served as regional police officer of the Hazara division, capital city police officer of Peshawar and DIG Special Branch K-P police.

Sources told The Express Tribune that Zulfiqar was removed after a spike in the crime rate in the federal capital. Only last week, some five people were killed in different incidents in Islamabad, a city known for its low crime rate.

Now, the new IG Rehman has the challenge to control the rising crime rate in Islamabad. The city is seeing unabated cases of snatching and mugging, while even gangs of robbers from other parts of the country and even Afghanistan have become active in the federal capital.

The latest case, which apparently pulled the reputation or Capital police to its lowest ebb, was the killing of the 22-year-old Osama Nadeem Satti who was shot dead in a shady encounter by five personnel of the Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) of Islamabad police in the early hours of January 3.

The CTD cops claim they fired on the car because Satti did not stop. Whereas the deceased’s father alleged that it was a premeditated murder.

Various attempts by police to cover up the incident or protect their officials was widely condemned on social media and drew attention of the government.

Moreover, in another incident, robbers snatched the gun from a sub-inspector and injured him though he did not even offer any resistance.

Besides this, street crimes are also on the rise in Islamabad and nobody is safe from them. Two truck drivers were killed by armed robbers as they refused to stop their vehicles to avert getting robbed.

On December 28, personnel of a security agency was killed on resisting robbery in Sector F-10 while the next day, a jewellery shop was looted in the Melody Market during broad daylight almost 500 meters away from the Aabpara police station.

The robbers wantonly used firearms in an area which has offices of sensitive agencies, besides National Accountability Bureau. The late response by the police raised many questions about its effectiveness.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 7^th, 2021.