‘Policeman’ caught slapping woman sent on remand

The man was a volunteer for the Police Qaumi Razakar force

KARACHI: A district and sessions court sent on Thursday a law enforcement volunteer, who was caught on camera slapping a woman in public, into police custody on physical remand.

The suspect, said to be a personnel of Police Qaumi Razakar (PQR), a volunteer force meant to assist police in managing law and order and ensuring public safety, was arrested on Wednesday after the provincial authorities took notice of the video going viral on social media.



The suspect, identified as Ali Akbar, was taken into custody from his house in Hijrat Colony after the place and persons in the video were identified. The woman being subject to torture in the video was accused of theft and therefore held by the shopkeepers at Gulf Market in Clifton. The video was filmed on Muharram 7 and uploaded on social media.

The PQR man, when produced before the South district judicial magistrate, Imran Imam Zaidi, regretted that he should not have beaten the woman and pleaded forgiveness. The papers submitted by the police in the court stated that Akbar misused the police uniform and disrespected it. Moreover, the police added, he assaulted a woman and disgraced her — an offence that is punishable with an imprisonment of two years.

"I started beating and abusing her as I became angry when she spat on me," said the accused in his confessional statement before the police. “She is a professional thief and was earlier caught red-handed stealing jewellery from the market, for which we have video evidence.”



The woman is currently in police custody and is being detained at the Women's Police Station in Saddar after an FIR of theft was registered against her at Clifton police station. "I am from a poor background with no money and I did it to feed my family," the woman told the police.

Police officials investigating the case revealed that the accused is a professional thief as another video confirmed that she had stolen a cellphone from a market. "She was also arrested by the Bahadurabad police in a robbery case some time ago," said SHO Imtiaz Tanoli. The officer said that the woman will be punished for theft while the security guard will be punished for abusing her.

The judge sent the PQR personnel to police custody on one-day physical remand. The judge also ordered the police to conduct a medical examination of the woman and submit its report to the court.



The case has been registered under Section 171 (wearing garb or carrying token used by public servant with fraudulent intent) and 354 (assault or criminal force to woman with intent to outrage her modesty) of the Pakistan Penal Code at the Clifton police station.

Watch the video here:



Published in The Express Tribune, October 30^th, 2015.