LAHORE: The Punjab police have rolled up its sleeves for the monitoring of individuals put on the fourth schedule and banned outfits besides implementing a strict ban on wall-chalking, use of loud speaker and hatred speeches on social media and in Majalis during Muharram-ul-Haram.

Presided over by Punjab IGP Shoaib Dastgir, the decision was taken during a security meeting at the central police office (CPO) on Monday. Prominent among the participants of the meeting were AIG IAB Azhar Hameed Khokhar, AIG CTD Punjab Muhammad Tahir Rai, AIG Special Branch Punjab Zaeem Iqbal Sheikh, DIG Operations Punjab Sohail Akhtar Sukhera, DIG Headquarters Syed Khurram Ali, DIG IT Waqas Nazeer and AIG Operations Imran Kishwar while all the RPOs and DPOs joined the conference via video-link.

While issuing instructions to the RPOs and DPOs, the IG ordered to ensure monitoring of banned organisations and individuals put on the fourth schedule besides implementing a strict ban on wall-chalking, use of loud speaker and hatred speeches both in majalis and on social media during Muharram.

"The RPOs and DPOs should personally move in field areas for checking security arrangements of sensitive processions and Majalis in their respective districts and regions and also brief the junior officials regarding the sensitivity of their duties," he asserted.

"The police officers should keep a close coordination with the administration of imambargahs and members of the local peace committees and take benefit from their recommendations so that there should be no negligence with respect to security arrangements," the IG advised.

He added that a four-tier security must be provided to sensitive and central processions and Majalis during Muharram in all the districts of Punjab. "For the security of mourners, the police should use walkthrough gates and metal detectors besides installation of CCTV cameras at designated spots for video recordings, he added.

The IG was of the view that search, sweep, combing and intelligence-based operations (IBOs) should be continued in the vicinity of sensitive Imambargahs, Majalis and mourning processions. The timings of taking out the processions must be followed as per devised SOPs, he said, adding that snipers should also be deputed on the rooftops of buildings falling under the route sensitive processions while commandoes in plainclothes would be perform duties around majalis.

While sharing figures, an official disclosed that over 200,000 cops would be deployed across Punjab for the security of 9,127 mourning processions and 36,464 majalis.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2020