Vehicles seized from robbers left to rust

Valuables wearing out in the open at police stations

LAHORE:

Returning the stolen goods recovered from robbers to their owners has become a big challenge for the city police. Several police stations in Multan present the scene of open air warehouses of stolen goods, including motorcycles and cars. Valuable vehicles have been rendered unusable because of being left in the open for a long time.

It also alleged that some police personnel remove parts from recovered motorcycles for their own use. The official record shows that the citizens of Multan were deprived of valuable goods worth millions of rupees in hundreds of incidents of robbery and theft during the past year, including vehicles, gold ornaments and household items.

A number of the robbers involved in the cases were arrested and stolen goods recovered from them but they remain randomly pled up in the city’s police stations. The stolen goods kept in the police stations could not be handed over to their owners after their identification and verification.

The handing over of the goods appears to have become a challenge for the newly appointed City Police Officer (CPO), Shakir Hussain Dawar. According to sources, there currently are thousands of motorcycles and hundreds of other vehicles in the Gulgasht, Saddar, Cantt, Setal Mari, Muzaffarabad, Shah Rukne-Alam, Mumtazabad and Old Kotwali police stations. The vehicles parked in the open are wearing out amid allegations from owners that their parts have been removed.