PESHAWAR: The police in the provincial capital received 549 applications about land disputes, while 452 people approached the authorities to seek resolution of financial disputes over the past few weeks, following major operations launched against land mafias.
A number of people approach the offices of the capital city police officer and senior superintendent of police (SSP) operations on a daily basis since the cops successfully carried out actions against mafias involved in grabbing land from commoners and depriving them of huge amounts of money.
Apart from complaints against mafias and criminals, many applications have been filed against relatives, business partners and other individuals.
“Police have been approached by 549 people, including many women, regarding land disputes with criminals, relatives, villagers and others. Besides, 452 complainants have sought police intervention in financial disputes,” an official said.
Several of these issues have already been resolved, while work is ongoing in other cases. In some instances, complainants have alleged that junior officers from SPs to SHOs are not showing the same level of commitment as senior officials to address these issues.
Capital City Police Officer (CCPO) Mian Saeed Ahmad said regular follow-up of all these applications had been ordered after such complaints to make sure progress was made in the right direction.
“As many as 339 cases of land disputes have been addressed so far and a total of 11,340 marlas of land have been handed over to the real owners after proper probes,” he added.
The Peshawar police chief said that separately an amount of Rs613.73 million had been returned to the real owners in different parts of Peshawar in financial disputes in recent weeks.
Anyone having an issue were asked to approach CCPO Mian Saeed Ahmad and Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP), Operations, Farhan Khan against the land mafia and other influential individuals. The police chiefs in other districts also received such applications in recent weeks.
In Peshawar a number of such applications were sent to the SPs, DSPs and Station House Officers in Peshawar over the last two months to properly probe the issue and take action if any crime was committed against the complainants.
This is for the first time police have been taking actions on such complaints that used to be decided in courts or referred to the dispute resolution councils, which also need to be reformed and made active like past years.
Apart from land mafia, a number of complainants have approached the CCPO and other officers against relatives, business partners and other people for having property and monetary disputes with them. Many of these cases have already been addressed. “I have filed an application against land grabbers within my family. I met the SSP operations after which my case was sent to the police station Bhanamari where the rivals are called,” said one complainant Bilal Ahmad.
Police in Peshawar launched a major crackdown on criminals involved in land grabbing and harassing the public a couple of months back. “Many of those who challenged the writ of the state and pointed guns at the cops have been gunned down, several have been arrested while others have escaped to avoid ruthless action by the police in the provincial capital,” an official said.
In the provincial capital, all the police officers have been directed not to spare the land mafias and people carrying weapons to harass the public or involved in drug dealing or other crimes.Several DSPs and SHOs were removed and many were served show-cause notices for not performing well against the mafias and criminals.
The police chief of the city said all the criminal groups would be eliminated to provide a sense of relief to the people of Peshawar. He said more actions had been planned in the coming days.
