LAHORE, 1 July — Authorities in the central province of Punjab are planning to purge the police force of inefficient and corrupt officers in the next few weeks.
The purge of bad cops will get under way before federal authorities implement their police reforms. “The idea is to clean up the force before putting the new system in place,” a senior police official told NFS.
By then officials also hope to finalize hundreds of inquiries against law enforcers at the district and provincial levels.
In the last 19 months a total of 2,446 policemen in Punjab have either been dismissed from service or sent on compulsory retirement. These policemen were sacked after inquiries proved the charges against them. The men faced charges ranging from abuse of authority to corruption and from partisan investigation to willful absence from duty.
Statistics show that the corruption and incompetence ratio was the highest among constables and their chiefs followed by assistant sub-inspectors. The number of inquiries seems to lessen as one ascends the police hierarchy. Almost 73 percent of those dismissed from service were constables while 8.5 percent were head constables. About 6.7 percent of the men were assistant superintendents. 1.5 percent were inspectors and 0.2 were deputy superintendents.
Almost the same pattern is visible in cases of compulsory retirement. Of the 612 men forcibly retired, 58 percent were constables, 10.6 percent were head constables, 15 percent were ASIs, 12 percent were SIs and 2.8 percent were inspectors.
While the number of policemen of lower rank seems to be inordinately high the fact is that most of them are charged with small-time offenses and excesses.
Inquiries prove that the corrupt senior officers usually go for big-time corruption. The four DSPs dismissed last year were thus rolling in dough.
