Daily Times

KARACHI: The Sindh government is all set to re-adjust at least 399 terminated constables of the Sindh Reserve Police after scrutiny, retest and physical verification at the Police Training Center, Saeedabad.

Inspector General of Police (IGP) A D Khwaja had terminated the services of around 1800 constables of the Sindh Reserve Police after an inquiry committee found that they were ‘illegally’ appointed and former provincial police chief had misused his powers in their appointment.

The Supreme Court had ordered the police chief on 10 May 2016 to terminate the services of those appointed on political basis.

Around 1,800 policemen, were illegally appointed between 2012 and 2014. “These personal were appointed in the Sindh Reserve Police,” the IGP had told home department’s standing committee, that 1,100 policemen were selected in 2012, while 860 were inducted in 2014.

“During our investigation, we learned that 80% of the selected belong to one district and of them 400 had identical height and chest measurements,” he said, without identifying the district.

According to sources, the committee formed on the orders of the Supreme Court a few months ago had prepared its report after thorough investigations and detected illegal appointments in the Sindh Reserve Police (SRP), Hyderabad, and Sukkur. All of them were appointed with the consent of former inspector general, he said.

He said that the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) had recently informed the Supreme Court about the committee’s report during the hearing of a case about investigation into corruption and illegal appointments in the Sindh police.

The involvement of the former Sindh IGP Ghulam Hyder Jamali in various corrupt practices has costed the exchequer more than Rs2 billion apart from the illegal appointments in different sections of the law enforcement agency. “It has been alleged that illegal appointments have been made in the Sindh police,” said the NAB report submitted to the apex court.

“The committee has completed its job. After the dismissal of illegal appointees, the process of rehiring will be initiated by the Sindh police to recruit personnel purely on the basis of merit. It has been decided that another fair chance will be given to the dismissed policemen so they can prove their merit, which they did not in the past.”

In this regard, at least 399 cops who were terminated in the recent past have been requested to appear before the committee at Police Training Center, Saeedabad Karachi on Sept 7 at 9 am

The committee will scrutinize the eligibility of 399 remaining candidates on case to case basis, who did not had previously appeared before committee and whose records are not available, committee will check their eligibility by conducting written test and interview, sources said.

The candidates will be checked for their physical standards as per recruitment rules of constables.

Daily Times repeatedly tried to contact IGP A D Khwaja to seek his official version however his cell phone remained unattended.