Daily Times

LAHORE: City police have arrested as many as 79,089 criminals involved in different crimes including 259 Proclaimed Offenders (PO) of A category, 2007 POs of B category, 10,692 court offenders and recovered stolen vehicles, drugs and illegal weapons as well as Rs 15 crore and Rs 6,100,000 from them in 2018.

Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Operations Muhammad Waqas Nazir said that under the supervision of Capital City Police Officer (CCPO) BA Nasir, Lahore police has been introducing effective mechanisms and modern reforms to curb crime in the city. Institutional structure of different units of Lahore police is being strengthened to improve the overall performance of the department. He said that under the directions of CCPO, special teams have been constituted at police station level for the arrest of POs and the performance of Dolphin Squad and Police Response Unit has been revamped.

He added that the street crime ratio during the months of November and December decreased to 10 percent whereas street crimes in top 30 crime areas of the city also decreased to 12 percent as a result of these reformed based measures adopted by Lahore police.

The DIG Operations further said that Lahore police will meet the expectations of public due to these administrative reforms and will utilise all its resources for curbing the criminals. Special operation teams have been constituted and crackdown initiated against criminals with record are the measures taken by the department at police station level.

The DIG Operations said that he himself is monitoring this campaign against crime and crime meetings at divisional level are being held on regular basis where all divisional superintendents of police also review the plan of action for the eradication of crime at fortnightly basis.

According to the official figures, Lahore police arrested as many as 79,089 criminals involved in different crimes in 2018. Police formulated a special strategy to stop incidents of dacoity, car theft and car snatching which showed good results. Car theft crimes in 2018 were 28 percent less than the previous year.

Similarly, a decrease of 33 percent in incidents of car snatching as well as 12 percent decrease in dacoity incidents was seen. Lahore police arrested 2,348 members of 987 dacoit gangs.

Another 2,418 cases were traced during investigation from these criminals. Police also recovered 46 Kalashnikovs, 342 rifles, 249 guns, 4,566 pistols, five carbines, 35 daggers and thousands of bullets from these criminals.

During action against drug peddlers, police arrested as many as 7,205 criminals and recovered from them more than 49 kilogrammes of heroin, more than 2001kg of hashish, more than 69kg opium and 87,938 bottles of liquor. Similarly, during 2018, Lahore police arrested 5,862 criminals involved in gambling and registered 1,122 cases against them recovering more than Rs 5,400,000.

Lahore police during its campaign against brothels arrested 2,118 criminals and 552 cases were registered against them in different police stations.

Lahore police also arrested 1,470 criminals for violating One Wheeling Act, 2,763 in Kite Flying Act, 475 in aerial firing, 6,493 for violating Price Control Act, 15 in Foreigners Act, 45 in Marriage Act and 358 persons were also arrested for violating Loudspeaker Act during 2018 so far.

Published in Daily Times, December 22^nd 2018.