The city has witnessed unprecedented number of bank heists in 2011 in which over Rs 60 million was looted from 19 branches of nine private banks during the year.
Instead of taking stern preventive measures to avert such incidents, the law enforcement agencies (LEAs) appeared toothless to get rigorous control over bank robbers and have been busy whole year searching shoulders to put responsibility of growing bank robberies. Although they claimed to have recovered only Rs 1.6 million of looted money, no robber has been nabbed so far, raising a big question mark over the performance of LEAs.
Since such bank robberies flared up in the city, Sindh police have been trying to make its position 'clear' and shifting whole responsibility of said robberies to the financial institutions.
Sindh police are of the view that the defective standard operating procedures (SOPs) of the banks had provided easy opportunities to the looters to commit said crime as the records of bank robberies for last five years claimed that the robbers had only targeted local banks because of defective SOPs.
Officials of Sindh Police also claimed that no foreign bank had been victimised because of these unabated bank robberies as they strictly followed SOPs to prevent such happenings.
They said that information might have been leaked from inside as the robbers got all technical knowledge-where the DVR recording system was placed; how the system would be destroyed, etc--before committing the robbery.
Although the Sindh police have identified over a dozen gangs involved in this illicit activity, the LEAs still remain clueless to bust these gangs, which are fearlessly looting valuables from local banks and industries, and have made the life of Karachiities miserable.
The country like Pakistan where no new investment opportunity is appreciated and foreign and domestic investors are reluctant to establish business, the looters have provided the financial shock to nine banks to the tune of over Rs 60 million in 2011.
The investigators told this scribe said in case of all bank robberies, the robbers were well aware of the place where security alarms were mounted as they first deactivated the alarms and then directly went to the cash counters for looting purpose.
They said the involvement of outlawed organisations in these bank robberies could not be ruled out as the investigation agencies confirmed connections of robbers with outlawed organisations. They said the authorities concerned have to chalk out comprehensive strategy to prevent such incidents in coming years.