Islamabad cop allegedly demanded Rs35,000 to register FIR

Accused officer pleads innocence even as inquiry ordered against him

ISLAMABAD: The city’s top cop has ordered an inquiry against a police officer who allegedly demanded Rs35,000 from a complainant just to register a first information report (FIR).

The complainant told The Express Tribune that ASI Iftikhar Ali of Khana police station had refused to entertain their complaint until they paid him.

“We went to the police station on March 18 after a labourer was beaten and injured by a group of men over a land dispute,” said Sheikh Shafeeq, a contractor who had taken the injured labourer to the police station to file a complaint about the assault. “But ASI Iftikhar asked for Rs15,000 just to accept our application,” Shafeeq claimed.

The contractor added that the officer sent the injured labourer to the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims) to obtain a medico-legal report, but not before he got his Rs15,000.

He claims that the officer later forced the contractor to fork out more money to further process the application.

“Even after receiving our application and completing a medical examination at Pims, he would not register the FIR and arrest the suspects. We had to pay him another Rs20,000 so that he would get the medical report and register an FIR,” Shafeeq claimed.

The FIR was finally registered on March 30, around 12 days after Shafeeq had first filed the complaint.

The complainants, however, said they did not mind paying the bribe. But what irked them was that the officer would not do anything to arrest the suspects even after pocketing such a large payout.

“He may have demanded an even larger bribe from the accused for not arresting them,” Shafeeq propounded.



Frustrated by the inaction despite having paid, the complainants approached the office of the Inspector General of Police DR Sultan Azam Temuri and lodged a complaint against ASI Ali for not investigating the case on merit and even after taking a bribe.

The police chief subsequently ordered AIG-Operations SSP Asmatullah Junejo to inquire into the bribery allegations against the cop.

Meanwhile, ASI Ali denied the allegations that he had taken money to register an FIR. “The bribery allegation is an attempt to blackmail me,” he told The Express Tribune on Sunday.

He also refuted allegations that he had refused to probe the case, pointing out that one of the two nominated suspects in the case had managed to obtain interim bail while the other was still at large.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 30^th, 2018.