Out-of-court settlement: Teaching his minions how to break law and bones

Verdict before investigations as ASP tortures a suspect in police custody.

ISLAMABAD:

Torturing people in custody is nothing new for police. However, an officer of the rank of Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) doing it himself was not very much known before.

Relatives of a man in police custody filed an application with a magistrate on Friday alleging that the Aabpara police, with ASP Faisal Bashir Memon leading from the front, tortured Muhammad Tariq Tanoli. The suspect was in the police custody on a two-day physical remand.

The medico-legal report of the victim confirmed that there were evidences of torture found on his body. “I have written in the report that there were evidences of wounds on his body,” said Dr Shazia Nazir of the Poly Clinic Hospital who had conducted the medical examination of the victim.

She said her job was to state the facts about the physical condition of a victim and not ascertain if he was in fact tortured or not.

However, she maintained there were multiple wounds on his body including a deep one on his elbow.

Tanoli, a resident of Rawalpindi, was arrested by the Aabpara police on March 29 in a case of giving a bogus cheque and not returning a huge sum of money which he allegedly owed to the complainant. These allegations were rejected by Tanoli.

In his application, Tanoli’s brother, Azam Khan said that he had witnessed ASP Memon torturing his brother.

“I went to see Tariq at around 5pm on Thursday. There I saw ASP Memon holding a chittar (a three feet long molded leather used by the police to torture) and some five to six police officials were holding on to my brother from hands and feet with his face down,” said the applicant.

He added that the ASP starting beating up his brother viciously while instructing his subordinates that this was their (police’s) way of conducting investigations. “We (police) will repeat it again and again, as we been instructed by the Deputy Inspector General of Police (Operations) Bani Amin,” said the ASP, Khan claimed.

On the completion of the two-day physical remand, Tanoli was produced before the court. The police requested to extend the physical remand. There, Tanoli and his lawyers informed the court that he had been tortured by the police.

Tanoli showed his wounds to the judge who then ordered a medical examination of the victim and sent him to jail on judicial remand. The medical examination report was handed over to the police, while the doctor who had conducted the examination maintained that there were evident marks of wounds on his body.

Tanoli’s brother had written in the application that while ASP Memon was torturing his brother in the Aabpara Police Station, the complainant in the case, Sheikh Rehman Shafiq, was also present there. “The ASP was saying that he will not stop his hand until the whole of the Aabpara does not hear his screams,” alleged Tanoli’s brother in his application.

Khan said that when he tried to intervene and asked the ASP to stop beating his brother, the ASP ordered his staff to send him out of the police station and ban his entry.

Tanoli, on the other hand, said before the police that he had been implicated in a fake case. “They prepared a counterfeit agreement carrying forged signatures,” he said. The investigation officer in the case, additional Station House Officer of the Aabpara Police Station, had also written in his inquiry report that no evidence could be found to declare Tanoli guilty of the allegations levelled against him.

ASP Memon who was transferred only a day before from Shalimar to Aabpara Police Station told Tanoli’s relatives that he was guilty and asked them to let him “complete his investigations”.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 02^nd, 2011.