LAHORE: Lahore has registered 525 cases of murder and attempted murder so far this year, according to police records — 194 murders and 331 attempted murders — a ledger to which a 23-year-old man was added over the weekend when he was shot dead in Badami Bagh in a dispute over a marriage proposal.
Police records show Model Town Division at the top of the murder list with 46 cases. Cantt Division recorded 45 and Sadar Division 42.
City Division registered 28 murders and Iqbal Town Division 24. Civil Lines Division reported the fewest, with 9 murder cases this year.
The distribution shifts sharply for attempted murder. Cantt Division stands first with 94 cases, well clear of the field.
Model Town Division recorded 62 attempted murder cases and Sadar Division 60. According to police records, City Division registered 54 and Iqbal Town Division 41. Civil Lines Division recorded 20 attempted murder cases this year.
The gap between the two rankings is worth reading carefully. Model Town leads on completed killings while Cantt leads on attempted ones, which points to differences in weapon type, response times and trauma-care access as much as to differences in the underlying rate of violence. A division with high attempted-murder registration and comparatively lower murder registration is, in part, a division where victims are surviving.
Civil Lines, which contains much of the city’s administrative core and its heaviest permanent security presence, sits at the bottom of both tables.
In Badami Bagh, motorcycle-riding suspects opened fire over a dispute concerning a marriage proposal, killing 23-year-old Farman. His friend Badshah was wounded in the firing.
Police said the SHO Badami Bagh and his team acted promptly on receiving information about the incident and arrested two suspects.
According to the DIG Operations, initial investigation indicated the incident was the outcome of a dispute over a marriage proposal, and further investigation is under way. Police teams are conducting raids to arrest the other nominated suspects, and those already arrested have been handed to investigation police for further inquiry and legal proceedings.
Disputes over marriage proposals — a rejected rishta, a match arranged elsewhere, a family’s refusal — account for a persistent share of Lahore’s homicides. These are not crimes of acquisition. They are disputes between people who know one another, escalated by the ready availability of a firearm, and they are among the hardest categories for policing to pre-empt because there is rarely a criminal record to flag in advance.
That is also why the case-registration figures above capture only part of the picture. Charge rates, conviction rates and the interval between registration and trial determine whether a registered case translates into deterrence. The Lahore High Court’s pattern of overturning murder convictions on appeal — examined in the paper’s report on why death-row verdicts are set aside — points to the investigative quality problems that sit behind the numbers.
The figures land during a broader tightening across the district, with the Inspector General of Police ordering stepped-up operations and a run of separate cases including a fatal brawl in Nawan Kot and two unidentified bodies recovered in the city.
Police have not released a year-on-year comparison for the same period, which would be required to establish whether the current figures represent an increase or a decline. The Lahore Times has requested the comparative data.
Suspects named in this report are accused and have not been convicted of any offence.
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