LAHORE, OCT 02 (DNA) – For all his notoriety, Lahore CCPO Umar Sheikh has only been in office for one month.

His one-month in office has been marked with spectacular PR disasters in the form of victim-blaming remarks, him apologizing with folded hands before a Senate committee and a rise in street crime.

The most infamous of his comments came after a woman was raped in front of her children on the Lahore-Sialkot motorway on September 9. He blamed the woman for leaving her house with petrol and not taking GT Road while travelling to Gujranwala at midnight.

Twelve police officers have been locked up in the past month but street crime continues unabated. Over 400 incidents of robberies were reported in September. In Islampura a woman’s earrings were ripped from her ears, in Johar Town a school teacher and a woman standing on her doorstep in Gujjarpura were robbed while in Harbanspura a pharmacy was robbed of hundreds of thousands of rupees.

Dozen of people were injured during robberies in the city. Sheikh had said that the police will be using technology to control street crime in the city. He previously served as the Motorway Police DIG and director-general of counterterrorism at NACTA. . =DNA

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