Massive reshuffle jolts police department

A major reshuffle in SHOs and Incharge investigations of Lahore Police is on cards in wake of newly introduced policy of Punjab Inspector General of Police (IGP) Inam Ghani. A few days ago, the IGP had issued directions to all the field officers throughout Punjab to remove all such police officers as SHOs who had criminal cases registered against them. In addition to this, he also had asked for experience of working as investigations officer also for the appointment of SHO. During a high level meeting held this week, Ghani had said SHOs with poor service record and criminal cases should be removed.

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He had also instructed officers against whom criminal cases were pending or whose service record was poor should never be posted SHO. An officer who had not worked in the Investigation Wing or police station for two years as an investigator should never be posted as SHO, he had said while delineating SHO appointment policy. Within hours of the instructions, around 100 SHOs throughout Punjab were removed from their post. These 100 also included five SHOs from Lahore Police. To further adopt IG’s SHO appointment policy in letter and spirit, Lahore Police commanders asked for data of SHOs being appointed in the city since 2000. The initial scrutiny of the data revealed that there were at least 35 SHOs that did not fulfill the criteria of their post laid out by the IGP.