Serious charges: Man claims police torture in viral video

CCPO forms high-level body to probe matter; officials claim he was involved in street crimes

PESHAWAR: A video of a man, who claims to have been arrested and then tortured by the police, has gone viral on social media.

Husnain, who appears in the video, has caused a stir by claiming that Banamarhi police had arrested him and then proceeded to torture him for several days at a private house.

The man claimed that he had been kept in illegal confinement since he was never taken to a police station nor were all the regular police procedures followed.

He went on to claim that the police had apparently booked him in a narcotics case and proceeded to plead innocence.

In the video, he shows alleged torture marks all over his body. The graphic video has caused a public outcry about the performance of police in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P). After the video went viral, the Capital City Police Officer (CCPO) Qazi Jamil took notice of it and formed a high-level committee headed by Cantt SP Wasim Riaz, DSP Fazal Wahid and Legal DSP Rashid.

On the other hand, a police officer at the Banamari police station, who spoke to The Express Tribune on the condition of anonymity since he was not allowed to speak to the media, said that Husnain was apparently a mobile phone snatcher and involved in the street crimes for which he was arrested and booked.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 13^th, 2018.