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Thursday March 28, 2024

KP CRCs receive 2,869 complaints against police in 2 months

By Javed Aziz Khan
March 30, 2019

PESHAWAR: Over 2,800 complaints were received to the complaint cells of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Police after the appointment of 26 superintendents of police (SPs) as headsof the complaints redressal centres (CRCs) on thedirectives of the apex court.

“A total 2,869 complaints were received to the CRCs all over the province during the first two months of the year. Out of the received complaints, 2,143 have been disposed of, with a ratio of 74.69 per cent,” a source told the News.

The source said that 154 of the complaints were about the non-registration of the first information report (FIR) while another 138 was about the corruption of the cops.

Besides, 79 complaints registered by the public were about the delay in investigation, 60 were about the unfair investigation, 122 were of misbehaviour by policemen, 16 were of illegal confinement, 24 complaints were of torture while 2,276 were miscellaneous complaints.

The source said that action was taken against 39 policemen. “Four officials were awarded major punishment while 35 others were awarded other punishments. Out of the reported cases, 855 proved to be false while 99 were irrelevant,” the source informed.

A meeting of the National Judicial Policy Making Committee (NPMC) headed by Chief Justice of Pakistan Justice Asif Saeed Khosa and attended by the chief justices of all high courts and the Federal Shariat Court on March 11 decided that since a police complaint redressal mechanism had been set up at the district level all over the country, applications under Section 22A of the CrPC might not be entertained by the courts unless accompanied by the decision of the relevant SP of the complaint cell.

All the provinces set up CRCs at every district by appointing an officer of the rank of SP as its head to receive complaints against police and take immediate actions. The bodies were tasked to quickly dispose of the complaints of the public to provide them with justice.

“The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Police already had a structure of the complaint cells and the province only had to appoint SPs as its heads to comply with the directives of the NPMC,” an official told The News.

The officials said the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Police have effective external and internal accountability bodies that keep a check on any irregularity and act promptly in case of receiving any complaint.

Over 8,000 policemen have been awarded different kinds of punishment during the last few years out of which around 1100 were those dismissed from service.These included policemen from the rank of acting SPs and DSPs down to constables.