A first-ever and modern School of Investigation has improved the conviction rate in criminal cases by more than 6 percent in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
This was declared during a briefing, attended by KP police chief Sanaullah Abbasi, Justice System Support Program (JSSP) National Team Leader Neil Fouler and other officials. JSSP is a project, funded by UK’s Department for International Development, and it arranges capacity building events to improve the law enforcement in Pakistan.
On the occasion, JSSP National Team Leader Neil Fouler stated that JSSP – being one of his country’s interventions – aims to support Pakistani government leadership in rule of law reforms and improved criminal justice system performance. He said it also tries to ensure help Pakistani government’s delivery of priority legal, regulatory and institutional reforms.
Also, he added, the programme aims to Improve criminal justice system coordination, planning and operations, and enhance institutional performance of police, prosecutions, corrections and courts to tackle systemic justice problems for Pakistan. He said the police must use modern tools while investigating various crimes.
Later, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa police chief Sanaullah Abbasi thanked the UK government for the intervention and said that efforts were underway to strengthen the investigation wing of the police force through modern training so that they probe the cases impartially and without different kinds of biases.
The police chief stated that the accused usually got freed due to biased investigation, which is why they have now started efforts to improve investigators’ skills.
“Compared to other departments, the trend of punishments is higher in the police force, this is because the corrupt and incompetent officers should mend their ways while those with better performance be rewarded,” he added.
He said that now they would try to impart training to police officials in the merged tribal districts. He also said that forensic labs have been functionalised in Peshawar and Swat districts and their role was of paramount importance in probing cases of child abuse cases.
Earlier, Additional IG Feroz Shah gave a detailed briefing on the crime and conviction rate in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa over the past several years. He said that conviction rate had been too low, despite significant arrests in various criminal cases. However, he said that conviction rate had registered almost 6 percent increase since the School of Investigation was set up.
Meanwhile, Superintendent of Police (SP) Shahzada Kaukab Farooq, who heads public relations wing of the KP Police, told Daily Times that the school had been set up in the year 2014. He said that the JSSP provided investigation kits and other tools that help the police better investigate cases and also provided trainings to the force.