Unwelcome relative: Police stopped from harassing aged citizen

Petitioner claims he is owed Rs170 million

LAHORE: An additional district and sessions judge on Monday directed the Civil Lines SHO to desist from harassing an aged citizen who claimed he was being dragged from one police station to another after a woman claiming to be the second wife of his deceased partner had surfaced.

Petitioner Shaukat Ali Shaheen told the court that he had concluded an agreement with one Muhammad Ajmal Sheikh over the construction and subsequent operations of a departmental store. He said a sum to the tune of around Rs40 million had been invested in this regard. Shaheen said Sheikh and his relatives had been named as guarantors in the contract.

Shaheen told the court that all the payments had been made by him in the form of bank transactions. He said problems had started cropping up between Sheikh and him during the project’s third phase.

He said Sheikh had died in April, 2015. The deceased’s second wife had surfaced following his demise much to the chagrin of his relatives. Shaheen said he had gotten embroiled in the tussle and was dragged from one police station to another by them. He said the deceased had not introduced his other wife to anyone.

The petitioner said the CCPO had asked him to come to his office where he had presented all pertinent documents. In turn, he said, he had been belittled by the official who had called them “dirty documents.” Later, he said another police official, had tried to coerce him into accepting Multan-based politician Khalid Khokhar and Musharraf Khan, a friend of the CCPO’s, as mediators. Smelling a rat, Shaheen said, he had left the office after pledging to look into the matter.

The petitioner said that Sheikh owed him a sum to the tune of Rs170 million according to documents available with him. He said his deceased partner’s family had no answer as to where the money had gone nor did they have the means to pay it back. Solely to avoid doing this, Shaheen said, police had been prevailed on with the task of harassing him.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 23^rd,  2016.