ISLAMABAD: Islamabad Police rounded up 61 beggars’ handlers in a special crackdown against professional alms-seekers during the ongoing month.
Around 411 beggars were also arrested during the same period, a news release on Monday said.
The capital police had constituted anti-beggars squads to take actions on various highways, signals, sectors and markets of the federal capital.
A special campaign to eliminate the beggary from the federal capital was underway in the supervision of Additional SP (Islamabad) Farhat Abbass Kazmi.
Under the campaign the locations of alms-seekers were being traced through safe city cameras and other intelligence sources to break the network of such people.
The nabbed persons had divided different residential areas, signals and main chowks for begging activities.
They used to pick up Men, women and children from slum areas and drop them at various signals, residential areas and chowks in a van, taxi or motorcycles.
The handlers used to get share from them and support them in case of any issue.
Police have registered cases against all the accused under Act relating to human smuggling and sections for involving women/children in begging activities.
SSP (Operations) Dr Syed Mustafa Tanweer has directed all zonal SPs to intensify crackdown against beggars in their respective areas to purge this menace from the society.