Karachi University to have its own security force to maintain law and order

The University of Karachi is likely to set up its own security force to maintain the law and order situation on the campus. KU sources informed Business Recorder here on Saturday that the proposal is under consideration of university's administration following the ranger's evacuation from the campus early this month.
The Rangers have evacuated the university campus after 19 years of its deployment after being accused of torturing Applied Chemistry department's professor, Professor Dr Riaz Ahmed on March 31, 2008. However, the ranger officials denying the allegation, charged the professor of misbehaving security personnel being deployed at university gate.
Both the parties also lodged the FIRs against each other. The teachers, students and civil society activists had also widely protested over the issue and demanded government to call back the rangers from educational institutes.
The proposal of forming university's own security force had come on floor in a meeting held to review the law and order situation just after the university's reopening after the incident, sources maintained.
The meeting was chaired by the Vice Chancellor KU, Dr Pirzada Qasim and was attended by other university's officials. However, the meeting, at that moment, had rejected the proposal saying that it would be beyond university's mandate to take any such step, sources revealed.
Sources, further, revealed that a group of university's teachers and other officials were backing the idea that brought into consideration a few days ago during a meeting, and now the university officials were seriously thinking over the proposal.
"However, no unfortunate event has occurred so far in the campus and the academic activities are smoothly running but any untoward situation, in case of students' clash that occurred very frequently in past, is not unpredictable", said a university official requesting anonymity.
He admitted that the police are performing their duties very efficiently but they could not maintain the same decorum for a long time as the police department was already suffering from lack of human resources.
'The KU should adopt an alternate strategy to maintain law and order condition within the campus, especially, in the pre-student union's election scenario", said official. "Our options are limited. Either we have to call back the rangers at its previous positions in the campus or to take some measures at our own to enhance the security of the campus", he added.
The official admitted that the formation of campus' own security force is also under consideration but there were many hurdles at administrative and government levels to materialise the idea.
Everything on the campus has already been politicised, he observed and feared that the idea would highly be criticised if unearthed prematurely. "The campus administration is working on different available options and the suitable one would be forwarded to Governor of Sindh for further process", he maintained.