Law and order: 56 accused of attacking, detaining police
The Mamu Kanjan Police have registered an FIR against 56 people on charges of beating nine police officials, including the station house officer, locking them up in a room and preventing them from performing their duties.
The police team had raided Chak No563-GB to arrest a proclaimed offender, Muhammad Yaseen, on Wednesday night, said SHO Tariq Javed.
The police said one of the villagers identified as Ghulam Mustafa was arrested on Thursday. However, they said, paper work in connection with the arrest would be completed on Friday morning.
SHO Javed said earlier several armed villagers attacked the police team when they had just reached the village. He said the villagers refused to let the police proceed with the raid and arrest the proclaimed offender.
He said that when the police team persisted, the villagers beat them up and locked them in a nearby house.
The SHO said that while they were locked up, the villagers provided safe passage to Yasin.
He said Yasin was wanted in several cases.
He said he had to leave for Lahore to appear before the High Court in connection with another case so he could not lodge an FIR then and arrest the villagers who beat up the police and locked them up.
He said the FIR registered later included Sections 324 (attempt to murder), 356 (assault or use of criminal force in attempt to commit theft), 148 (rioting) and 149 (all members of an unlawful assembly will be considered guilty of offence) of the Pakistan Penal Code.
He hoped that all the accused would be arrested in a day. He said a special police team would conduct raids for their arrest.
Several residents of the said village told The Express Tribune that the police had raided the house of Yasin’s parents without any arrest warrants.
Shaukat, Waqas and Muhammad Ali said that the police were stopped because they had not sought permission from the elders of the village before carrying out the raid.
“They should have asked the elders for assistance. We would ourselves had talked to Yasin and persuaded him to surrender,” they said. They said by conducting the raid in this manner the police had disgraced the village and its residents.
“It’s our right to resist such high handed actions,” they said.
A village elder, Muhammad Imran, rejected that there were any criminals in the village.
He said the raid was an assault on the villagers and could not have been tolerated.
He said the villagers had used force after the police beat up several villagers without any reason.
Published in The Express Tribune, June 17th, 2011.
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