From the underworld to drug networks, Punjab’s specialised crime-fighting force has put organised criminals under unprecedented pressure

For years, Punjab’s law-and-order challenge was not simply about crime. It was about organised crime.

Dacoit gangs, professional robbers, vehicle-lifting networks, extortionists, kidnappers, drug dealers and notorious underworld figures had developed networks that often stretched across districts and, in some cases, across provincial and international boundaries.

Conventional policing, with its district-based structures and traditional investigation methods, often found itself reacting to crime after it had already occurred.

The creation of the Crime Control Department (CCD) represented a fundamentally different approach.

The idea was simple but ambitious: create a specialised force capable of pursuing the most dangerous criminals across Punjab, combining intelligence, investigation, surveillance, technology and field operations.

More than a year into its operations, the available figures suggest that the CCD has made a significant impact on serious crime.

And behind the emergence of the department stands an officer who deserves particular recognition: Additional Inspector General Sohail Zafar Chattha, the officer appointed to lead the CCD during its formative phase and turn an ambitious institutional concept into an operational force.

A different kind of police force

The CCD was established specifically to deal with serious and organised crime.

Unlike ordinary police stations, which are primarily responsible for their respective jurisdictions, the CCD was designed to operate across Punjab against criminals and networks involved in murder, dacoity, robbery, kidnapping for ransom, extortion, vehicle theft, land grabbing, drug trafficking and other serious offences.

When the legal framework was approved in April 2025, Sohail Zafar Chattha briefed Punjab Police leadership on the department’s objectives and operational requirements. The initial structure envisaged around 4,000 specialised personnel.

By May 2025, Chattha said the department had completed appointments from district to senior ranks, established offices and set up 38 police stations across Punjab.

That was an important institutional achievement.

The CCD was not simply another police wing added to an already large bureaucracy. It was given the ability to register and investigate serious cases and operate across the province, allowing investigators to look at organised crime as a network rather than as disconnected FIRs.

The results are difficult to ignore

The most powerful argument for the CCD is ultimately the crime data.

According to figures released by the department and reported by major media organisations, Lahore experienced a dramatic reduction in several categories of serious crime after the CCD became operational.

The CCD reported that serious crime in Lahore declined from 29,471 cases to 12,470, a reduction of approximately 58 percent.

Among the most significant reductions were:

• Murder: down 36 percent
• Dacoity: down 53 percent
• Robbery: down 77 percent
• Car theft: down 75 percent

These are not insignificant changes.

A reduction of more than three-quarters in reported robbery represents thousands fewer incidents in which citizens were exposed to armed criminals and street violence.

The figures become even more striking when individual categories are examined.

In an earlier comparison released by the CCD, Lahore’s robbery cases fell by 78 percent, house dacoity by 82 percent, motorcycle snatching by 69 percent, while murder declined by 39 percent.

At the provincial level, the department reported dacoity falling by 60 percent and robbery by 53 percent.

The pattern suggests that the impact has not been confined to one locality.

Multan provides another example

The improvement was not limited to Lahore.

In Multan, the CCD reported a 55 percent reduction in serious crime, with dacoity declining by more than 72 percent and robbery by almost 65 percent.

Such regional comparisons are important because they demonstrate that the department’s operational model has been replicated beyond Punjab’s capital.

The broader picture is therefore of a specialised force putting sustained pressure on the types of criminal activity for which it was specifically established.

The underworld is no longer operating with the same confidence

Perhaps the most significant achievement of the CCD cannot be measured simply through FIR statistics.

It is the psychological impact on organised criminals.

For years, notorious gangsters and criminal networks in Punjab often appeared to operate with an extraordinary degree of confidence.

Some had financial resources.

Some had political or social connections.

Some maintained links with criminals in other districts.

And some believed that leaving one jurisdiction was enough to escape the consequences of their crimes.

The CCD changed that equation.

A department with a province-wide mandate can follow a criminal from one district to another instead of allowing jurisdictional boundaries to become a shield.

The message to organised criminals is straightforward:

You may leave the neighbourhood, but you cannot necessarily leave the investigation.

That is precisely the kind of deterrence a specialised crime-control institution is supposed to create.

The Lahore underworld came under unprecedented pressure

The department’s confrontation with Lahore’s criminal underworld has been particularly visible.

For years, rival criminal groups had been associated with cycles of revenge, targeted killings, extortion and violence.

The CCD subsequently pursued some of the province’s most notorious wanted criminals, including high-profile figures linked to Lahore’s underworld.

The pursuit of criminals who had attempted to escape Pakistan also demonstrated another dimension of the department’s strategy: organised crime cannot necessarily be defeated if police remain confined to the immediate scene of a crime.

The message was that the state could pursue criminal networks beyond their traditional areas of operation.

That represents a significant change from the old model of reactive policing.

The fight against the drug mafia

Another major component of the CCD’s mandate is the fight against major drug dealers and organised narcotics networks.

This is particularly important because the drug trade is not simply a public-health problem.

It is also an organised-crime problem.

Drug trafficking generates money that can finance weapons, gangs, extortion, corruption and other criminal activity.

The CCD has therefore increasingly focused on the networks behind drug distribution rather than limiting enforcement to street-level sellers.

Punjab Police’s wider anti-drug campaign illustrates the scale of the challenge.

During 2025, Punjab Police reported more than 115,000 raids, around 76,000 arrests of alleged drug dealers and approximately 75,000 registered cases as part of its province-wide Drug-Free Punjab campaign.

These figures belong to the broader Punjab Police campaign and should not be attributed exclusively to the CCD.

But the CCD’s specialised focus on major dealers and organised narcotics networks complements that wider campaign.

This distinction is important because the drug mafia cannot be dismantled simply by arresting street-level peddlers.

The real target has to be the chain:

supplier → transporter → wholesaler → distributor → dealer → street seller.

Break the network, and the criminal economy becomes much harder to sustain.

Technology has changed the game

One of the more important aspects of the CCD model is its reliance on intelligence and technology.

The department was designed around centralised criminal databases, surveillance, monitoring systems, tracking technology and modern information systems.

Punjab Police has also highlighted initiatives involving electronic tracking of habitual offenders, giving investigators another tool to monitor high-risk individuals.

This represents an important change in policing philosophy.

Traditional policing often begins after the crime.

Modern policing attempts to identify patterns before the next crime occurs.

That requires data.

It requires intelligence.

And it requires officers who can convert information into operations.

This is where the leadership of Sohail Zafar Chattha becomes particularly relevant.

Sohail Zafar Chattha: Building the CCD from the ground up

It would be unfair to attribute the CCD’s achievements to one individual.

Thousands of police officers, investigators, intelligence personnel and field staff have participated in the department’s operations.

But it would be equally unfair to ignore the role of the officer who was entrusted with building the organisation during its most critical formative period.

Sohail Zafar Chattha was appointed as the CCD’s head when the department was being established in early 2025.

He was therefore not taking over a mature institution with established procedures, personnel and infrastructure.

He was helping build one.

From the department’s initial organisational planning to recruitment, training, establishment of police stations, intelligence operations and subsequent performance monitoring, Chattha remained closely associated with the CCD’s development.

The fact that the department had established 38 police stations across Punjab within its initial operational phase gives some indication of the scale of the task.

In February 2026, Chattha again briefed the Punjab Police chief on the CCD’s mandate, objectives, targets, performance and challenges — demonstrating that the department remained focused on institutional development rather than merely individual operations.

Leadership matters

Police organisations do not become effective simply because governments issue notifications.

They require leadership.

They require officers willing to take responsibility.

They require operational discipline.

And they require a willingness to make difficult decisions against criminals who may be heavily armed and deeply connected.

Chattha’s leadership has coincided with a period in which the CCD has aggressively pursued some of Punjab’s most dangerous criminal networks.

The crime figures alone cannot be credited to him personally, but they provide a strong basis for recognising the role he and his team have played.

His contribution is best understood as that of an institution-builder.

He helped transform a concept into an organisation.

And that organisation has subsequently become one of Punjab’s most visible instruments against serious crime.

The other side of the story must also be acknowledged

A credible case for the CCD does not require pretending that every aspect of its operations has been perfect.

The department’s use of armed encounters has generated serious criticism from human-rights organisations.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan has called for a high-level judicial inquiry into CCD encounters and raised concerns about the number of deaths during police operations. Those concerns deserve to be taken seriously.

The answer to criticism should not be to abandon the fight against organised crime.

It should be to make that fight more professional, more transparent and more accountable.

The ultimate objective should be clear:

criminals should be arrested, investigated, prosecuted and convicted wherever the evidence permits.

The strongest crime-control institution is not one that merely eliminates criminals.

It is one that dismantles criminal networks while producing cases strong enough to withstand judicial scrutiny.

The Hania Ahmed tragedy was a test of accountability

The tragic killing of nine-year-old Hania Ahmed in Chakwal was a deeply troubling moment for the department.

It also became a test of whether the CCD was willing to hold its own personnel accountable.

Chattha acknowledged the seriousness of the incident.

The accused officer was suspended and arrested, and a murder case under Section 302 was registered against him at the request of the victim’s family. Investigators also secured the officer’s rifle, spent bullet casings and other forensic evidence.

No institutional response can undo the loss of a child.

But an organisation’s credibility is also tested by what it does when one of its own officers is accused of wrongdoing.

In this case, the CCD’s stated response was to pursue the matter through the legal process and review its operational procedures.

That accountability should become institutional rather than exceptional.

The numbers need to be interpreted carefully

There is also a legitimate analytical caution.

The reduction in crime cannot automatically be attributed entirely to the CCD.

Punjab Police has simultaneously expanded Safe City technology, intelligence-based policing, anti-drug operations and other crime-control initiatives.

Furthermore, broader official crime statistics do not support a simplistic claim that all crime in Punjab has fallen by 70 or 80 percent.

The more defensible conclusion is narrower and stronger:

the categories of serious and organised crime specifically targeted by the CCD have recorded substantial reductions in several major cities and regions.

That is enough to make the department’s performance significant.

There is no need to exaggerate the numbers.

The numbers already make the case.

From a new experiment to a major crime-fighting institution

The CCD’s first phase has demonstrated what specialised policing can achieve when intelligence, technology, provincial jurisdiction and operational resources are brought together.

Its impact can be seen in the reduction of robbery, dacoity, vehicle crime and other serious offences reported in Lahore and other regions.

Its pressure on organised gangs has altered the operating environment for criminals.

Its focus on major drug networks addresses a criminal economy that feeds other forms of violence.

And its province-wide structure has made it more difficult for organised criminals to exploit jurisdictional boundaries.

For this transformation, the CCD’s officers deserve recognition.

And among those officers, Sohail Zafar Chattha deserves particular credit for helping build and lead the organisation during its most difficult formative period.

The achievement is not his alone.

It belongs to the officers who investigate cases, intelligence teams who identify targets, field personnel who carry out operations and police families who bear the risks of this work.

But leadership matters.

And when a new institution is created from scratch and begins producing measurable reductions in the very crimes it was established to fight, the person responsible for turning that institution into an operational force deserves to be acknowledged.

The challenge ahead

The CCD has demonstrated that organised criminals can be put under sustained pressure.

Now it must demonstrate that those gains can be institutionalised.

The next stage should focus on:

better investigations, stronger prosecution, forensic evidence, financial intelligence, asset tracing, witness protection, modern policing technology and transparent accountability.

The goal should be to make Punjab a place where criminal networks cannot simply replace one gang leader with another.

If the CCD can combine its aggressive operational approach with stronger convictions and uncompromising respect for due process, it can become more than a successful crackdown.

It can become a lasting transformation of Punjab’s law-and-order architecture.

For decades, the question was whether the state could keep up with Punjab’s organised criminals.

The emergence of the CCD has changed that question.

Today, the more important question is whether the criminals can keep up with the state.

And judging by the crime figures emerging from Lahore, Multan and other parts of Punjab, the balance of power has already begun to shift.