LAHORE: Reported thefts of commercial vehicles in Lahore have fallen by 48 per cent, according to police records covering the first seven months of the year.
Police data shows 276 cases of commercial vehicle theft were registered during the first seven months of the current year, against 534 commercial vehicles stolen in the corresponding period last year — a reduction of 258 cases.
Division by division
The decline is recorded across all six investigation divisions of the city.
- Model Town Division: 80 commercial vehicles stolen last year; 31 this year.
- Iqbal Town Division: 66 cases last year; 32 this year.
- Sadar Division: 118 incidents reported last year; 69 this year.
- Civil Lines Division: 72 last year; 41 this year.
- Cantt Division: 70 last year; 32 cases registered this year.
- City Division: 128 last year; 71 this year.
For the purposes of these figures, commercial vehicles include buses, trucks, passenger vans, rickshaws and other loader vehicles.
Commercial vehicle theft is not an ordinary property crime. For the owner of a single loader rickshaw, a delivery van or a Suzuki pickup, the vehicle is not an asset but the entire business — frequently financed on instalments, often uninsured, and supporting a household with no other income. A single theft can end a livelihood.
The category also carries a security dimension. Stolen commercial vehicles are attractive to organised crime precisely because they attract no attention on the road. They are used in the movement of contraband, in the transport of stolen goods, and — in the worst cases — in violent crime.
Police have attributed the decline to enforcement work by specialised units, including the Police Response Unit and the anti-vehicle-lifting staff of the investigation divisions, alongside the expansion of camera coverage and automatic number plate recognition under the Safe City project.
Two caveats belong in any honest reading of the data. First, these are figures for registered cases, not for thefts committed; a fall in registration can reflect a change in reporting behaviour as much as a change in crime. Second, recovery rates — the proportion of stolen vehicles actually returned to owners — are a separate and equally important measure that this dataset does not address.
Transport operators are advised to fit tracking devices, park in monitored locations overnight, retain photographic records of chassis and engine numbers, and report a theft immediately rather than after a period of private searching. The first two hours after a theft are, in the assessment of investigators, the period in which recovery is most likely — because the vehicle has not yet been dismantled, repainted or moved out of the district.
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