Crime infects streets of Lahore

Hundreds of robberies took place in last couple of months

LAHORE:

The scourge of street crimes in the provincial capital seems to have spiraled out of control.

According to police records, during the last two days of February, more than 300 incidents of looting by robbers and thieves were reported in the city while the month of March started with about 350 incidents in the provincial capital.

In the first two months of this year, people lost millions of rupees in cash, gold jewelery, vehicles and motorcycles.

In the last 24 hours, three women and a child have been sexually assaulted in the city.

According to records, goods worth more than Rs10 million were looted in 209 robberies.

Fifty-nine cases of motorcycle theft were registered while four vehicles were stolen in the last 24 hours in the provincial capital.

However, the Punjab Safe Cities Authority’s quarterly report released by Lahore police in January has shown a clear reduction in 15 calls for serious incidents of street crimes.

CCPO Fayyaz Ahmed Dev said that the continuous decline in Rescue 15 crime calls reflected an improvement in the performance of Lahore Police.

According to the report, a decrease of 44.6% was recorded in calls on 15 for robbery, burglary, theft and snatching of vehicles.

According to the quarterly data, calls for murder, attempted murder, kidnapping, violence and fighting decreased by 46%.

According to the report, in the last two months, the number of street crime calls has decreased by 66% and shop robberies by 52%.

If we talk about the month of February, then the chain of incidents of robbery and theft was on the rise.

According to police records, there were 316 robberies and thefts in the city on the last day of February.

On the first day of March, there were 347 incidents of robbery while two women were raped and a child was abducted.

Armed robbers looted four shops and a house.

Meanwhile, millions of rupees were snatched in 21 incidents of street crime. Moreover, two motorcyclists were robbed of their vehicles at gunpoint in the provincial capital while three cars were also stolen.

Attempts to contact Lahore CCPO Fayyaz Ahmed Dev to ask him about rising number of street crimes remained unsuccessful. He was also sent an SMS, but there was no response from him.

According to sources, a cell at the office of the IG of Punjab monitors the performance of all the districts.

The districts in which the law and order situation is bad are included in the red column while those in which the rate of crime has gone down are included in the gray list and the best performing districts are included in the green column.

The Punjab IG reprimands the head of the district with red column and warns him to improve his performance while the head of green column receives commendations.

The incumbent Lahore CCPO, Fayyaz Ahmed Dev, was in charge of the same monitoring cell before his appointment as the CCPO.

One feels appalled over the spectacle that 84 police stations in Lahore are allegedly using “delaying tactics in registering cases”.

This was revealed when the former DIG (Operations), Ahsan Younis, after his appointment, issued orders to register 26,000 pending cases in Lahore, and Lahore police had registered a record 22,000 cases in a month.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 5^th, 2022.