Daily Times

KARACHI: The Supreme Court on Thursday wondered over big fish, term implied for higher officials, not figuring on the radar of investigators looking into the involvement of police officers in malpractices and asked authorities to come up with a mechanism employed to screen officers with patchy background.

A three-judge bench comprising Justice Gulzar Ahmed, Maqbool Baqar and Sajjad Ali Shah gave the Sindh government and provincial police chief to submit another report within two weeks on action taken against high-profile officers of the Sindh police.

The bench had taken up a suo motu case regarding involvement of the police officials in crimes including murder, robbery, and extortion at the apex court’s Karachi registry.

The court directed the committee constituted to investigate corruption allegations against police officers to take stern action against all the corrupt officials, including the tank of deputy inspector general.

Justice Gulzar came down hard on the committee for submitted what he described as a ‘biased’ report. Big fish never get into trap of the investigators and the investigations centered on low-rank officers.

There was need to dispel an impression that police officials enjoyed exemption, snapped another member of the bench.

Advocate General Zameer Ghumro assured the judges that corrupt irrespective of their rank will be identified and brought to book under the Civil Servants Act.

Earlier, additional IG Sanaullah Abbasi had submitted a report, stating that the record of 12000 police officers with patchy background was scrutinized to look for their involvement in crimes.

Abbasi, who was the head of the committee set up to screen the police officers with patchy record, stated that services of eight policemen were terminated over their involvement in crimes. 84 were sent on compulsory retirement.

He said that another 250 policemen, who were found unfit for field postings, were posted at the headquarters, where punishment will be awarded to them under the law upon fulfillment of the requirements.

He said that scrutiny of remaining 11,658 is still underway. He sought time to file report once scrutiny process was completed.

The bench had directed the committee to take action against police officers found unfit for postings if there was substantial evidence against them and submit a report on the next hearing.

Meanwhile, the bench directed the Sindh chief secretary to make all-out efforts to make Zulifqarabad oil tankers terminal operational within a week.

The judges were hearing a petition filed by Shugafta Bibi, a resident of Clifton Block 1, who had gone to the court seeking the shifting of the oil tankers’ terminal from Clifton.

Ghumro told the judges that an area for setting up terminal at Zulifqarabad has been reserved which couldn’t be developed due to oil companies not giving their share of amount to be spent on its development.

During previous hearing, the court had observed that compliance of the court order had not been made despite a passage of several years.

It observed that oil tankers had been causing difficulties for the residents of the locality.

The court had directed Karachi commissioner to submit a detailed report regarding completion of Zulfiqarabad oil tankers terminal.

The transport secretary informed the judges that almost 50 percent of the project had been completed, and that the oil tankers operators would be directed to shift their tankers for further operation.

Published in Daily Times, July 7^th , 2017.