[Dawn] The latest incident of a massive kaboom outside the CID centre has exposed the hollow claims of police about controlling the movement of Islamic fascisti in the lovely provincial capital and increased security concerns for the denizens.There was only five-day gap between the two blasts -- one at US Consulate staff vehicle and the other at CID centre -- and both were carried out through explosive laden vehicles.
In Cantonment, police have the advantage that personnel of security forces are regularly checking vehicles and pedestrians. Sometimes these security personnel even refuse to allow media persons to move ahead if they don't have original computerised national identity card.
The law enforcement agencies also have the required equipment to detect any kind of weapons and explosives.
Beautiful Downtown Peshawar has witnessed dozens of devastating kabooms including suicide and car blast and now police know better about the entry and exit points, used by terrorists, but even then such fatal incidents are taking place repeatedly.
Police have spent billions of rupees on purchase of arms, ammunition and bomb detectors but the situation is deteriorating with every passing day.
Police claim to have got information about possible sabotage attempts and movement of would-be jacket wallahs in the district but so far no pragmatic steps have been taken to arrest the terrorists.
It is worth mentioning that almost every day police issue press statements about seizure of hashish, a few cartridges, pistols, liquor and arrest of proclaimed offenders, unregistered Afghan nationals and gamblers. The police PROs mention every time that the action was taken on prior information but it is astonishing that their informers seem least bothered to give them tips about movement of suicide
bombers even in the sensitive areas.
Both the University Town and CID centre areas are located at a short distance from each others on the main Jamrud Road where police and security forces are supposed to check vehicles round the clock. Despite these measures entry of explosives-laden vehicles is beyond imagination.
In the prevailing circumstances the job of police investigation department has become very easy. In case of any terrorist act the final job done by police is registration of FIR and then the file is sent to cold storage.
There is no follow-up media briefing about the incidents. Dozens of terrorist incidents have taken place in Peshawar during the past three years but the officials never took trouble to share the information with media.
However,
The ever-popular
However...
SSP Ijaz Khan is not ready to admit it as security lapse and says that security has been tightened across the district and coppers are regularly checking the movement of suspected people and vehicles as well.
He admits that intelligence service needs to be further strengthened. "We have established checkposts on all main and link roads both in urban and rural areas but even then beturbanned goons can manage to reach their targets and it is matter of great concern," he said.
The SSP says that in the past beturbanned goons used to enter via Frontier Road or Kohat Road into the city but now all the entry points have been plugged. They (terrorists) seem to have shifted to main population of Peshawar, he says.