More Police Officials Killed In Two Months

By Arman Sabir

Karachi is the most populated city of Pakistan having more than 15 million people. Being the most populated city of the country, Karachi witnesses various sorts of crimes including the most heinous crime of targeted killings.
In the year 2012 alone, 2,303 people were killed across the city as compared to 1,800 in the previous year, according to the statistics compiled by the Karachi police.
Last year, 154 police officials fell prey to targeted killings. The noticeable fact is that 62 police officials were killed during the ten months of the year 2012 and the other 92 police officials were killed in just two months – November and December – in 2012.
Most of the officials killed were posted in sensitive areas or they had been carrying out investigation in high profile cases.
SSP Investigation Khuwaja Naveed was attacked too but he was lucky enough to escape the attack. He acted on a tip-off and foiled the plot to kill the then DIG East Shahid Hayat. He also arrested some of the suspects involved in the plot.
The suspects told the investigators during interrogation that a squad comprising 60 shooters was ready to kill the then DIG East. The secrecy was leaked as a lot of people were involved in the plot.
The arrested suspects told the police that the objective to kill the high ranking police officer was to create scare in the society and among the police ranks.
The intelligence agencies had expressed their apprehensions to the police in October last that police and other officials could be made target to sabotage the peace in Karachi.
Looking at the statistics now, 92 police officials were killed in the last fifty days of the previous year and this fact strengthened the apprehensions of the intelligence agencies. The intelligence reports also feared that leaders and known figures of Shia and Sunni sects might also be killed with an aim to create anarchy in the society.
Apart from the apprehensions by intelligence agencies, the chief of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan Zohra Yusuf said that the last two months of the year 2012 were the worst with regard to sectarian killings.
A senior police official told this scribe that he spoke to some station house officers who told him that they did not usually go to inspect the crime scene of a targeted murder instead they loved to visit crime scene of a robbery or other kind of crime.
The senior police official said that he was astonished to learn the reason why they didn’t go to visit the crime scene of the targeted killings. “They told me the reason is that they knew about the killers and there is nothing useful to visit such places”, he added.
A big question arises out here why the situation is being made from bad to worse? Police officials and experts on the law and order were of the view that the situation was being made from bad to worse to delay the elections and the electoral process.
Some police officials said the police must be free of political pressures, while other officials were of the view that senior officials were transferred before their prescribed tenure of three years. If they were sure that they would not be transferred before three years, they would deliver without any fear, he added.