LAHORE: Lahore has recorded 525 cases of murder and attempted murder so far this year, according to police records, with 194 murder cases and 331 attempted murder cases registered across the city’s six operational divisions.
The figures, compiled from Lahore Police records, offer the clearest division-wise picture yet of where lethal and near-lethal violence is concentrated in the provincial capital.
Model Town Division topped the murder table with 46 registered cases. Cantt Division followed closely with 45, and Saddar Division recorded 42.
City Division registered 28 murder cases and Iqbal Town Division 24. Civil Lines Division recorded the lowest figure, with nine murder cases reported this year.
The ranking shifts for attempted murder. Cantt Division stands first with 94 cases — comfortably the highest single-division figure in either category.
Model Town Division registered 62 attempted murder cases and Saddar Division 60. City Division recorded 54 and Iqbal Town Division 41. Civil Lines Division again reported the lowest count, with 20 cases.
The three divisions at the top of both tables — Cantt, Model Town and Saddar — are also the city’s largest by geographical area and among the fastest-growing by population, encompassing extensive peri-urban belts along the southern and eastern approaches to Lahore where formal housing schemes, agricultural land and unregulated settlement meet.
Civil Lines Division, by contrast, covers a comparatively compact and densely policed core that includes the administrative and judicial heart of the city, which is consistent with its position at the bottom of both tables.
A distinction worth drawing for readers: these are case registration figures, not conviction figures, and not victim counts. A single incident involving multiple accused or multiple injured parties is registered as one FIR. Attempted murder under Section 324 of the Pakistan Penal Code is also a charge that is frequently added to FIRs arising from altercations, land disputes and aerial-firing incidents where no fatality occurred, which is one reason it consistently outruns murder registration by a wide margin in Punjab’s urban districts.
Lahore Police have run a series of sustained enforcement drives through the year, including crackdowns on proclaimed offenders, on display of weapons and aerial firing, and on the illegal arms trade — the last being directly relevant to both categories in the data, given that firearms account for the majority of murder and attempted murder registrations in the district.
Officers point out that a significant proportion of Lahore’s murder cases arise from private disputes — property, domestic conflict and long-running family feuds — rather than from organised or predatory crime. A recent case in Shalimar, where a son was arrested for killing his father over a property dispute, fits that pattern.
The data released covers registration only. It does not indicate how many of the 194 murder cases have been traced, how many accused have been arrested, how many cases have been challaned to court, or how many have ended in conviction or acquittal. Nor does it include a year-on-year comparison, which would be required to establish whether the trend is rising or falling.
The Lahore Times has sought the corresponding detection and disposal figures from the Lahore Police Operations Wing and will publish them when provided.
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