Pakistan records surge in street crime

Islamabad [Pakistan], April 9 : Amid the depreciation of the value of Pakistani rupee, street crime increased in Pakistan, especially in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad, according to Business Brecorder.
The rise in street crime is a symptom of a deeper malaise in Pakistan's society, stemming from issues of growing inequality, poverty and unemployment.
In Pakistan, there are some gangs who are becoming unchallenged. For instance, Karachi, the country's largest urban centre, where some statistics claim the rate of street crime has come down from its peak some years back. But it is there nonetheless.
According to the Business Brecorder citing the Citizens-Police Liaison Committee (CPLC), Karachi has witnessed an alarming increase in street crime. More alarmingly, people are shot dead by robbers for putting up resistance. During the first three months of the year 2023, more than 21,000 cases were reported, though the number of unreported cases must be much higher.
Robbers took the lives of as many as 34 people and injured 150, while the number of incidents of snatching of cars, motorcycles and mobile phones crossed the 20,000 mark.
Even in Rawalpindi, the street crime cases are high as 89 cases were reported to police in which 29 people lost their motorcycles, 42 mobile phones and gold jewellery worth over Rs 3.5 million, reported Dawn.
All cases were registered with the police and an investigation was launched, however, street crime continued unabated in the city.
Similar incidents of burglary took place in Race Course where the resident was robbed of gold jewellery worth Rs725,000 and Rs200,000 in cash and robbers in Khayaban-i-Sir Syed robbed Rs 200,000 and a mobile phone, reported the Dawn.
Even the capital city, Islamabad is not safe. Culprits shot and injured two persons during separate robberies in the capital, police said.
Islamabad's Interior Minister Abdul Rehman Kanju admitted that the street crime rate has increased in Islamabad, Dawn reported.
Regarding the crimes against women, Kanju claimed that it was because of the government's directives to the police to register every first information report (FIR) in this regard.
Previously, he said, registration of FIR was discouraged and most cases were not being reported.
He, however, claimed that out of 3,000 to 3,500 cases, the majority were registered by parents of girls over marriage issues. He said 90 per cent of these cases were disposed of by the courts when these girls appeared before the courts and said that they had married of their own will, according to Dawn.
Last year, the robbers had killed 100 people and injured over 4,000. Just what happened on a single day, last Monday, is a fearful account of the growing menace of street crime in the Nation's Capital. On that very day, three persons were robbed in Islamabad-Rawalpindi.
A group of five people came to a grocery store near Golra police station and deprived the shopkeeper of Rs. 400,000. An armed robber entered a house in F-10/2, but by posing a mobile phone as pistol, the residents forced him to surrender and handed him over to the police. Luckily, the robber was not lynched by the angry residents as sometimes happens in such cases, reported Business Brecorder.