Lahore Logs 163 Thefts a Day as Police Claim 76% Crime Drop

LAHORE: Lahore police registered 39,624 theft cases and 1,472 burglaries in the first eight months of 2026 — about 163 thefts and six burglaries every day, according to police records reported on Sunday. Three weeks earlier, Lahore Operations Police said overall crime had fallen by 76 percent and emergency 15 calls by 84 percent.

Both claims come from police data, and both can be true only if they measure different things. Monday’s arrests suggest what sits between them, which includes a large volume of low-level property crime, committed by small crews that use disguise, rented vehicles and online sales to avoid detection, and that turn violent when a victim resists.

Capital City Police Officer Bilal Siddique Kamyana on Monday ordered geo-fencing of theft hotspots, plain-clothes decoy operations and a crackdown on the trade in stolen phones with altered IMEI numbers. Separately, a sub-inspector posted at Mozang police station was arrested at a hotel during a raid in which a proclaimed offender escaped.

The police figures on Lahore crime tell two stories. The first is a story of steep decline. Lahore Operations Police reported a 76 per cent fall in overall crime and an 84 per cent drop in 15 calls, crediting resource management, technology and real-time surveillance. Murder fell 14 per cent and attempted murder 28 per cent in the first eight months of 2026, according to police records. The Crime Control Department reported that motorcycle theft fell by 51 per cent in the first quarter, and The Nation reported mobile phone snatching down from 246 to 133 cases in the first five months.

The second story is volume. Police recorded 39,624 thefts and 1,472 burglaries in eight months. Three divisions — Cantt, Saddar and Model Town — accounted for about two-thirds of all thefts.

Theft and burglary cases registered in Lahore, January–August 2026

Source: Lahore Police records, as reported by The Lahore Times, September 20, 2026.

The police claims ledger

Figures as published by police or reported from police data; baselines and category definitions vary and are not directly comparable.

The difference is not necessarily a contradiction. A 76 percent fall in “overall crime” most likely refers to a defined basket of offences over a specific baseline that has not been published, while the theft total is a raw count. But it matters which number the public hears. The CCD’s own first-quarter release put Lahore’s robbery count at a handful of cases — a definition far narrower than what a resident whose phone is taken at gunpoint would call robbery.

Three things are missing from every police release. Recovery rates — how much stolen property is returned. Conviction rates — how many arrests end in punishment. And refused or unregistered complaints. Under-registration has a history in Lahore. According to report, that police had turned down some 16,000 complaints of vehicle snatching, theft and robbery over ten months, a practice known as “burking”. Easier registration through police front desks and online systems may have reduced that gap since.

Several of Monday’s cases involved methods designed to avoid attention. In Faisal Town, police arrested a woman, Irshad Bibi, and her accomplice Naeem from N Block. Police say the pair rented a chingchi rickshaw specifically to rob passengers. “He rode among them and took their phones and cash.” CCTV footage shows the thefts clearly, police say. Three stolen phones, a pistol and the rickshaw were recovered.

In Qila Gujjar Singh, police arrested two women, identified as Lado Bibi and Maddi Bibi, who allegedly posed as garbage collectors to steal goods. Police say both have criminal records and were wanted in several theft cases; days earlier they had allegedly taken spare parts displayed outside a shop. They were traced through CCTV, and stolen parts and Rs150,000 in cash were recovered.

In Burki, on the city’s eastern edge, police arrested what they described as a two-man burglary gang, with criminal records including the alleged ringleader Wajid and his accomplice Bashir. SP Cantt Atif Amir said the pair broke into factories and farm compounds, sold the goods and split the proceeds, and had stolen goats and sheep worth several hundred thousand rupees months earlier. Police recovered a chingchi rickshaw, cash, pliers, iron girders and an illegal weapon. The repeated appearance of rented or owned three-wheelers in these cases — as transport, cover and getaway — is a pattern, as is the recovery of weapons from theft suspects.

In Dial village, in Cantt division, two men on a motorcycle were signalled to stop by robbers. The rider tried to accelerate away instead; the robbers opened fire. One man was hit, both fell, and the robbers escaped with the motorcycle, cash and a mobile phone. The injured man was taken to hospital. Burki police have registered a case; no arrest has been made.

In Islampura, a young man identified as Umar allegedly stabbed a shopkeeper, Sohail, when he asked for an overdue installment on a mobile phone. The shopkeeper’s condition is stable and the suspect has been arrested. The case is a reminder that the phone economy — bought on credit, stolen for resale, stripped for parts — generates violence at several points.

Lari Adda police arrested a suspect named Kamran with 1,120 grams of hashish. SP City Arshad Hayat Kanju said he had been selling on foot. Islampura police arrested Usman and Asif with a combined 1,040 grams of crystal methamphetamine. Both cases join a series of narcotics arrests in the city.

Kite enforcement continued in parallel. Shadman police arrested a man from Jhang district who, police say, made kites to online order, advertised them on social media and was delivering to Lahore when caught with more than 2,000 kites. Shafiqabad police arrested Hamid and Asif with 2,250 finished kites and 10 spools of banned string; SP Kanju said they moved stock in sacks on local transport. The seizures come as not one manufacturing licence has yet been issued to the roughly 4,000 applicants in the legal trade — so the only kites currently being made are, by definition, illegal ones.

In Race Course police limits, a police team went to the Hajveri Hotel to arrest a proclaimed offender named Umar. According to the FIR, the hotel manager helped Umar escape as soon as the police arrived. While searching rooms, officers found a sub-inspector, Muhammad Aslam, posted at Mozang police station, in a room with a woman in what the FIR describes as an objectionable condition. Both were booked. The CCPO declared zero tolerance for corruption and negligence in police ranks on September 19; the case follows the suspension of an entire police station’s staff in Ghaziabad and a constable’s arrest in Harbanspura earlier.

At a meeting on theft prevention on Monday, CCPO Kamyana reviewed action against organised theft gangs. Officers agreed on geo-fencing of theft hotspots, stronger surveillance, human intelligence and modern technology; extra deployment at hotspots; better patrolling; and plain-clothes decoy operations. The CCPO ordered arrests of pickpockets and phone thieves, with particular watch on crowded places, markets, events and public transport.

The meeting decided on a full crackdown on those who change the IMEI numbers of stolen phones. Recovered phones are to be back-tracked to trace entire resale networks, and the phone trade is to be required to verify identity documents and records at the point of sale. That is the most significant element: it targets the market that makes phone theft pay, rather than only the thief.

The honest reading of the data is mixed. The most serious violent crimes do appear to be falling, and the police can point to technology — Safe City cameras, body-worn cameras, automated vehicle alerts — that is genuinely solving cases, as CCTV did in Faisal Town and Qila Gujjar Singh. But high-volume property crime remains a daily reality in every division, and the long-term provincial trend for motorcycle theft has been upward. According to reports, more than 650,000 motorcycle theft and snatching cases in Punjab over ten years. Public policy analyst Professor Salman Abid said that the CCD may have strengthened the perception of police authority while motorcycle theft and snatching kept rising.

There is also a cost the crime figures do not count. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan reported 500 police encounters and 670 deaths by October 2025 after the CCD’s creation, and a petition in the Lahore High Court alleged fake encounters. Earlier reports highlight a death in an alleged CCD encounter at Badami Bagh and two brothers missing after being picked up. Falling crime numbers that rest partly on lethal force are a different achievement from falling crime numbers that rest on detection and prosecution. Lahore’s residents are owed data that lets them tell the two apart.