Police officials charged in abduction case

Some of the officials were already in jail over kidnapping allegations

LAHORE: Riding on the coattails of numerous reports of police excesses, five cops have been booked for kidnapping a local for ransom.

The suspects, all police officers, were accused of kidnapping a man named Manzoor. Incidentally, these cops were already in jail after being charged, last month, with the abduction of another local identified as Yaseen. It was also reported that Wahdat Colony police refused to register a complaint against their fellows.

The alleged victim of the second case, Manzoor, had to approach the court which ordered the registration of an FIR at Wahdat Colony police station. The accused officials were deployed at the Samanabad police station at the time of the incident.

In the first case which occurred last month, Yaseen’s father lodged a complaint with former Lahore Deputy Inspector General of Police Operations (DIG) Waqas Nazir. He stated that the then Samanabad SHO, Raza Rauf, and other police officials illegally abducted his son. He accused the cops of demanding money for his release.

The DIG ordered an inquiry into the matter and a police team raided at a private “torture cell” in the Madina Street of Samanabad from where the victim was recovered. An FIR was registered against Rauf and other police officials, including Faheem Murtaza, Ghulam Hussain, Ansar Ali, Fahad Waqas, Abdul Rehman, Kashif, Arshad and Naeem Iqbal.

Meanwhile, another citizen, identified as Manzoor, approached Wahdat Colony police and complained that he was detained by five of the aforementioned police officials.

SHO Wahdat Colony Inspector Muhammad Akmal said the complainant narrated that he was standing at a petrol pump to refuel when he was held. However, the police officer refused to register the complaint as Manzoor was unable to prove the allegation.

“He was a drug dealer and Samanabad police had arrested him in a case,” the SHO claimed. “Manzoor later went missing when the policemen were arrested for kidnapping.” However, he acknowledged that the detention of both Manzoor and Yaseen coincided at some point.

Manzoor then approached the court for the registration of the FIR and his plea was accepted. SHO Wahdat Colony said the officials were already in jail and investigations were underway.

This is not the first such incident to have taken place in the country. In September last year, a group of over half a dozen policemen from Islamabad, Punjab and Sindh were booked for allegedly kidnapping a man for ransom in Rawalpindi.



Police officials said that the suspects, some in plainclothes and some in uniform, kidnapped a property dealer in Wah Cantt on August 29 and released him four days later after receiving a ransom of Rs0.4 million.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 26^th, 2019.