LAHORE – The Punjab Police Inspector General Muhammad Habib-ur-Rehman claimed on Tuesday that crime rate has decreased significantly and incidents of kidnappings for ransom have been controlled by implementing an effective strategy by the police which has already shown results in other parts of Punjab.

After consulting with the Regional Police Officers (RPOs), and other senior police officers, the IG has decided to request increase in budget for the Punjab police for this fiscal year because the amount allocated in the proposed budget is not sufficient to meet the financial needs of the police.
The IGP Punjab expressed these views while addressing the RPO Conference at Central Police Office. All the Regional Police Officers (RPOs), City Police Officers (CPOs), District Police Officers (DPOs) and Lahore CCPO, DIG (Operations) and DIG (Investigations) attended the conference.
The IGP was informed that the police submitted challans of 194 murder cases including 20 cases of blind murders during the last five months. Similarly, the challans for 16 kidnapping cases for ransom, 9 of dacoity-cum-murder, 71 of dacoities and 696 cases of theft were also submitted in the courts by the police. The police also cracked 108 gangs and arrested 389 of their members and at least 1145 cases had been traced against these gangs. The police also recovered stolen property worth Rs130m during its campaign against hardened criminals they also arrested 6985 Proclaimed Offenders (POs) and 2705 Court Absconders (CAs) from across the province. The Punjab police handed over 1645 vehicles, recovered from criminals, to the genuine owners during the last five months.
The meeting also decided that the RPO Conference would be called Provincial Law and Order Conference in future and would be held regularly. The meeting also decided to restore the old designations of police posts including IG, Additional IGs, DIGs, SSPs, SPs and DSPs rather than using the nomenclatures of CPOs, DPOs and SDPOs.