Uneasy head: ‘What kind of police chief are you?’
Lahore High Court Chief Justice Ijaz Ahmad Chaudhry slammed the city’s police chief on Wednesday for not arresting a sub inspector declared a proclaimed offender by the courts and for giving him a new job instead.
The court was hearing a petition from a woman named Khalida Parveen, who demanded action against the police official for falsely implicating her sons and tampering with evidence in a case.
At the last hearing, the court had summoned Deputy Inspector General (Operations) Ghulam Muhammad Dogar, but he had been unable to give a satisfactory explanation as to why SI Abdul Shakoor was currently serving at Gulshan-i-Ravi police station instead of behind bars. The judge had then summoned Capital City Police Officer Ahmad Raza Tahir. Turning to the CCPO in the courtroom on Wednesday, the chief justice said; “What kind of CCPO are you? You have no clue about what is happening in police stations and the kind of activities policemen are involved in.”
He warned him that if such an incident were repeated he would be sent to jail. Referring to a recent incident where a policeman kidnapped a married woman and forced her to marry him, the chief justice said: “Look at that ugly situation ... it seems you have closed your eyes to such incidents.”
In his defence, the CCPO said that SI Abdul Shakoor may not have been served the summons in the case and resultantly declared an absconder.
Upon this, the chief justice ordered Tahir to transfer all process servers in Lahore, saying that they were not doing their job diligently. He then adjourned the hearing for July 13.
SI Abdul Shakoor, formerly an investigation officer at Islampura police station, is accused of tampering with evidence in a murder case to frame two brothers. He also allegedly framed a fake case of illegal arms possession against them and arrested them even though they had pre-arrest bail.
Parveen, the boys’ mother, filed a complaint to senior police officials and the Model Town deputy superintendent of police registered an FIR against the SI under the Police Order 2002 after an inquiry declared him guilty of the charges.
Shakoor did not cooperate with the investigation or surrender to the police, so he was declared an absconder.
Published in The Express Tribune, June 30th, 2011.
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