Law and Technology Combine to Catch Habitual Criminal
With at least 30 First Information Reports (FIRs) registered against him, Muhammad Imran is a habitual criminal. Most of the FIRs are for dacoity, and the oldest one dates back to 2005. In 2016 alone, 9 cases have been registered against the man. A quick overview of his file shows that Imran has operated across the length and breadth of Lahore, from Defense A to Johar Town and from Gulshan e Ravi to South Cantt.
Recently, Imran got into a motorcycle accident in the city. Hurt, he desperately needed a place to rest and recuperate, but with all the FIRs lodged against him, Lahore was not a plausible option anymore.
He decided to head west to Faisalabad, where he was not a wanted man. The plan was to rent a place, maybe see a doctor, but generally lay low for a while and tend to the injured knee.
Little did he know, his luck was fast running out, thanks to a legislation known as The Punjab Information of Temporary Residents Act of 2015 and some advanced IT solutions with which the Punjab Police has recently been empowered.
According to the legislation, the property dealer, landlord and tenant shall, within 15 days from the time of delivery of possession of the rent premises to the tenant, provide information about the tenant in the prescribed manner to the police through the fastest means of communication.
Bilal (name changed) was only following the law, when he went to register his tenant, Imran at the local police station. And thats where he ran into Sub Inspector Yasir Qayyum, incharge of the IT section at the CPO Office in Faisalabad. We ran Imrans Computerized National Identity Card Number (CNIC) through the online criminal records database and found multiple cases registered against the person.
Standard Police procedure got underway from here. The Police Station reached out to the CIA with the information, who raided the address, where they found and arrested Imran.
While this isnt the first time that an arrest has been made due to information gained from tenant registration, the fact that a cross district arrest has been made due to real time information sharing is a first.
According to Senior Police Official Hussain Habib, the recent technological advancements in policing are a game changer. Work that used to take days now takes minutes, and this not only makes the Police more efficient, it creates a layer of accountability as well, he says.
The sharing of criminal records across districts is just one of many IT based initiatives that are being brought into the Police system on the back of the Punjab Information Technology Board (PITB). Other such initiatives include Hotel Eye, Anti Vehicle Lifting System and the 15 Emergency Mobile application.
محمد عمران عادی مجرم ہے ،اس کیخلاف کم از کم 30 ایف آئی آر درج ہیں اور زیادہ تر ایف آئی آر ڈکیتی کے بارے میں ہیں۔اس کیخلاف سب سے پرانی ڈکیتی کی ایف آئی آر 2005ء میں درج ہوئی جبکہ صرف 2016ء میں اس کیخلاف 9مقدمات درج ہوئے۔ اس کی فائل کا اگرجائزہ لیا جائے تو پتہ چلتا ہے کہ عمران نے پورے لاہور میں ڈیفنس سے لے کر جوہر ٹاؤن اور گلشن راوی سے جنوبی چھاؤنی تک وارداتیں کیں۔ حال ہی میں عمران کاشہر میں موٹر سائیکل پر حادثہ ہوا۔ شدید چوٹوں کی وجہ سے اسے آرام اور صحت کی بحالی کے لئے علاج کی ضرورت تھی لیکن درج ایف آئی آرز کی وجہ سے اس کیلئے لاہور میں رہنا ممکن نہیں تھا لہذا اس نے علاج کے غرض سے فیصل آباد جانے کا فیصلہ کیا جہاں وہ ایک مطلوب شخص نہیں تھا۔ اسے وہاں کرائے پر مکان حاصل کرکے ڈاکٹر سے بھی ملنا تھا جو اس کے زخمی گھٹنے کا علاج ہوسکے۔ تاہم وہ نہیں جانتا تھا کہ اس کی قسمت تیزی سے اس کا ساتھ چھوڑ رہی ہے۔ ہمیں پنجاب انفارمیشن آف ٹیمپریری ریزیڈنٹ ایکٹ 2015ء کا شکر گزار ہونا چاہئے جس کے تحت پنجاب پولیس بااختیار ہو گئی ۔ اس قانون کے تحت پراپرٹی ڈیلر اورمالک مکان کو گھر کاقبضہ دینےکے 15دن کے اندر کرایہ دار سے متعلق معلومات پولیس کو دینا ہوں گی۔ عمران نے اپنے اصل نام کی بجائے تبدیل شدہ نام بلال کے بطور کرایہ دار اپنا اندراج کرایا۔ یہیں پر سی پی او آفس فیصل آباد میں آئی ٹی انچارج سب انسپکٹر یاسر قیوم نے اس کی شناخت کی۔ انہوں نے عمران کے کمپیوٹرائز شناختی کارڈ نمبر کا آن لائن کریمنل ریکارڈ سے چیک کیا تو معلوم ہوا کہ اس کیخلاف تو بہت سے مقدمات درج ہیں۔ تب پولیس نے سی آئی اے کو معلومات فراہم کیں جس نے عمران کے پتے پر چھاپہ مار کر اسے گرفتار کرلیا۔ کرایہ داری رجسٹریشن قانون کے تحت ہونے والی یہ پہلی گرفتاری نہیں ہے۔ البتہ دو اضلاع کے درمیان مجرمانہ ریکارڈ سے متعلق معلومات کا پہلی بار تبادلہ ہوا۔ سینئر پولیس افسر حسین حبیب کے مطابق پولیس کے شعبے میں ٹیکنالوجی کی حالیہ ترقی گیم چینجر ہے۔ اب وہ کام جو دنوں میں ہوتا تھا اسے چند منٹ لگتے ہیں۔ اور اس سے نہ صرف پولیس کی کارکردگی بہتر ہوئی ہے بلکہ احتساب کے نظام کو بھی بہتر بنانے میں مدد ملی ہے۔اضلاع کے درمیان کریمنل ریکارڈ کا تبادلہ بہت سے آئی ٹی پر مبنی اقدامات میں سے ایک ہے جس کے پیچھے پنجاب انفارمیشن ٹیکنالوجی بورڈ کی کاوش کارفرما ہے۔ ان میں ہوٹل آئی، اینٹی وہیکل لفٹنگ کا نظام، 15ایمرجنسی موبائل ایپلی کیشن جیسے اقدامات شامل ہیں۔
How Pakistan Is Fighting Crime and Corruption With Technology
The Information Technology sector of Pakistan, supported by some smart high-tech professionals and entrepreneurs, has created a global stir. Within the public sector, the government of Punjab has taken a lead role in this regard. The provincial governments recent quick shift to use information and communication technology (ICT) to improve governance and public services, has attracted a lot of attention lately. One of the noted aspects of these interventions is that things have shifted into overdrive as far as the accessibility of public service and delivery time is concerned. At policy level, the objective behind this paradigm shift appears to be aimed at cutting down protracted and frustrating bureaucratic structures whose malfunction have largely been blamed for the performance handicap in the public sector. Dr. Umar Saif, the chairman of the Punjab Information Technology Board (PITB), over the last couple of years, has made great strides toward the realization of this goal. The result has been an accelerating shift toward an unparalleled use of technology to improve good governance. In this regard, PITB has introduced a number of flagship projects in the areas of counterterrorism, crime, law, education, agriculture, and others. Moreover, a number of citizen facilitation centers have been setup across Punjab to boost the efficiency and effectiveness of services given to public.
[FONT="]In the education sector, PITBs Smart Monitoring initiative has proved highly effective in improving the performance of public schools by collecting real-time data on different key performance indicators. Under this initiative, each of the 36 districts in Punjab are monitored on an individual basis by the governments monitoring officers, who are tasked with visiting and reporting on 52,695 public schools registered across the province every month. The activity of monitoring officers is geotagged to ensure their timely visits. To make the process more open and transparent and increase citizens participation, all collected data in this regard and its real-time performance and monitoring have been made available online for public access.
To combat terrorism, crime, and enhance the performance of police, different tech-based initiatives are being put in place. The automation of Punjabs Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) as well as digitalization of the criminal database and suspect profiling have helped in the apprehension of number of suspects who have previously evaded justice. A few months ago, one suspect with multiple identities was recognized as one person by the Punjab police due to the effective use of a digital criminal fingerprint database, which is being implemented across the province.
Furthermore, the PITB-developed Crime Mapping (CM) software has facilitated police in identifying some of the long established and emerging crime pockets in the province. The software has also proven valuable in helping the provincial law enforcement agencies in conducting electronic crime investigations, devising better strategies to preempt, discover, and control criminal acts. Moreover, to tighten a noose around hardened criminals and terrorists, the police in Lahore has made it essential for all hotels to use the Hotel Eye software in order to monitor the record and information of all visitors and guests staying there. In the last two months, the city police have been able to arrest 43 criminals from different hotels in Lahore by using the software.
Above all, besides improving transparency, CM software will also help in reducing the much reported andrampant corruption in police department. In this regard, reforms related to Paperless Policing such as real-time monitoring of police stations, online FIR submissions and screening of the investigation progress, and biometric attendance of police personnel is being employed. Currently, the initiative is being used in Lahore but the government plans to expand it to the entire province.
The agriculture sector is another area where the provincial government is making much needed technology based interventions. Among other efforts to improve the sector, Punjab government is planning to providesmart phones to about 600,000 farmers in the province to better the output of crops.
The explosive boom of Pakistans IT industry has begun to penetrate into almost every sphere of public sector by offering new tools and systems to improve their performance. The trend is being noticed at all levels: Plans are underway to conduct the next national census with the effective deployment of technological methods; Pakistan Railway is preparing to computerize its ticketing system; and Pakistan customs will soon be using smart phones for snap checking vehicles on the roads, which could help in the identification of illicit smuggled goods and traders.
Every level of government can be managed and is required to be managed using IT in this new digital world. Introduction of robust mobile technologies has made it absolutely essential for governments worldwide to introduce IT-based customer services in each department, maintains Bilal Bajwa, a consultant and analyst at the Rockwell Automation.
Burhan Rasool, the head of software department wing at the PITB, says that transparency and trust in the public sector can be improved by making citizens a part of the policy making process. Rasool further asserts that part of this can be achieved by making public the governments working and data as a way to keep citizens informed about what is happening inside the power corridors.
In the long run, the improved transparency, government accountability before its citizens, and effectiveness of service delivery due to these interventions will certainly increase public trust in the public sector, which is essential in strengthening the democratic process of any country.
