Visiting expat family ‘robbed, sexually assaulted’ by cops in Islamabad

Two police officials booked after issue highlighted; suspected cops still at large

ISLAMABAD: Pakistani police officials have lived up to their reputation after members of a Pakistani-American family, visiting their home after spending 16 years abroad, were illegally confined, robbed, and sexually assaulted at a police checkpoint in Islamabad on Sunday.

The family was travelling from Bhara Kahu to Wah on November 13 when their rented car was stopped at a police checkpoint on Kashmir Chowk.



A police official asked the driver to show documents for the car. After the driver produced the documents, the official started accusing the driver of pushing drugs and started searching the car.

The officials asked the driver and a male family member* to step out of the vehicle, while another official searched the purse of a female relative*.

Family members later told the police that the official took $800 out of the purse.

The official, whose name plate read ‘Rana Mudassir’, took the man and the driver to a nearby picket, unstrung their trousers and touched their private parts, claiming that it was part of the frisking procedure.

The two police officials then threatened family, saying they would take the driver to the police station and lodge a case against him. After this, the cops returned $700 out of the $800 they had taken from the purse and kept the difference.

The family was finally allowed to leave.

The issue was only highlighted once they reached their hometown in Wah and narrated the episode to other family members, one of whom had a relative working as a journalist in Islamabad.

Later that evening, they lodged a complaint at the Secretariat Police Station against the two officials, identified as constables Mudassir and Wadood.

The suspects, however, were still at-large when this report was filed on Monday evening.

A family member told The Express Tribune that the man, 32, had left for the US in 2000, and was mentally distraught and upset by the policemen’s behaviour.

‘Leniency’ in FIR

While police booked the two cops for illegal confinement, loot and extortion, they have not been charged for the alleged molestation, even though the complaint submitted by a family member clearly mentioned that the policemen took off the boy’s pants and touched him.



Legal expert Barrister Masroor Shah says the police should have also added PPC Section 294 (obscene acts). He said there is no justification for frisking and searching a citizen like this.

“Insulting and extorting money from the public in the garb of security checking should be discouraged, otherwise the already-dwindling trust of people in men in uniform would be completely eroded. I am surprised that on one hand, the police spend millions of rupees in advertisements running on TV requesting the public to trust and love their police, but on the other, the same policemen take every opportunity to rob and torture the public,” he said while commenting on the episode.

A police officer said that the two officials had been suspended and that it was very likely that they could be dismissed from service.

*NAMES WITHHELD TO PROTECT IDENTITY

Published in The Express Tribune, November 15^th, 2016.