Meeting discusses security steps to curb bank heists

Sindh Home Minister Suhail Siyal presided over a high-level meeting on Thursday to discuss the recent surge in bank robberies across the city.

The spokesman for the minister said the meeting was attended by Home Secretary Qazi Shahid Pervaiz, Karachi police chief Addl IGP Ghulam Qadir Thebo, Counter Terrorism Department Sindh chief Addl IGP Dr Sanaullah Abbasi, the Crime Investigation Agency DIG, zonal DIGs, district SSPs and other senior officers.

Senior representatives of the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), commercial banks, the All Pakistan Security Agencies Association and the Citizens-Police Liaison Committee also attended the meeting.

The meeting discussed security measures at bank branches in the light of the standard operating procedure (SOP) that had already been circulated to all commercial banks by the SBP. Professional expertise of private security guards was also part of the discussion.

Some investigators claimed that the bank authorities were not following the SOP, but on the other hand, some observers claimed that the police were responsible for solving crimes and that they had failed to bring to book anyone involved in heists.

In this year’s bank robberies the authorities found the involvement of security guards and bank staffers in most of the cases, as the financial institutions had failed to adopt the SOP issued by the police department and the SBP.

Investigators said that most of the robberies were committed by terrorists for raising funds for their respective organisations, adding that in the recent past the police had busted many groups of banned outfits and found them involved in bank heists, the biggest among them being Jundullah.