Magistrate grants a special team two-day physical remand of suspects. PHOTO: FILE
“We have arrested an inspector, an assistant sub-inspector and a constable in the investigation branch of the Balakot police station on Monday night,” said Superintendent Arif Javed Khan while talking to The Express Tribune on Tuesday.
He added that Inspector Ali Akbar, ASI Afsar Shah and Constable Zahid had already been booked and while they had also been suspended from duty since the death of one of the detainee due to alleged torture.
He added that the officers were arrested after a probe committee, formed on the orders of Hazara DIG and headed by Haripur DPO Shehzad Bukhari, found them to be responsible for inflicting critical injuries to Ghulam Hussain.
According to SP Khan, the police officers were produced before a Balakot magistrate who granted a special police investigating team two-days physical custody.
“They are now in the custody of the special investigation team which I am heading,” SP Khan added.
According to police records, 33-year-old Hussain, a Kohistan native who had settled in the Bissiyan village of Balakot, had been arrested by Balakot police along with co-accused Farzaman on February 21 on the suspicion that they were involved in a robbery case. They were detained at the Balakot police station for four days where family members claimed they were brutally tortured. On February 25, they were produced before a Balakot magistrate who sent them to the Mansehra District Jail on judicial remand. Jail authorities noted the injuries the two men had and that their medico-legal records did not carry any information about that. They were sent to the King Abdullah Teaching Hospital.
Shabbir Ahmed, Hussain’s elder brother claimed that doctors at the hospital did not provide his brother with adequate care, nor did they allow his family to see Hussian.
When Hussain’s condition worsened on the evening of March 5, he was shifted to the Ayub Teaching Hospital. However, owing to his injuries, he died at the hospital on March 6. Hospital sources said that Hussain had died of renal failure and that when he was brought to the hospital, his kidneys were not functioning. He was set to undergo dialysis on March 6, but he died before he could receive the treatment.
Enraged by the police attitude, Hussain’s family members first blocked the Karakoram Highway outside the ATH by placing his body on the road.
Before the burial on March 7, Hussain’s family members and villagers gathered near Sunehri Masjid started chanting slogans against the police and took the dead body to Mansehra bypass. They staged a protest by placing the dead body in the middle of the busy road. Led by Sunehri Masjid cleric Faizul Bari, the protesters accused the Balakot police of subjecting Hussain to third-degree torture after allegedly taking a bribe from his rivals.
The protesters kept the busy KKH blocked for over five hours before Mansehra DPO held negotiations with the protesters. After they were assured that the police officers who had allegedly tortured the men would be booked did the blockade end. However, some of the protesters continued their blockade. When asked to clear the road, they pelted the police with stones forcing officials to baton charge them and fire tear gas. The protesters later dispersed but the road remained blocked for next two hours.
Published in The Express Tribune, April 5th, 2017.
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