Vicious landlord: Dog attack victim’s family ‘forced’ to drop charges

Doctors say the nine-year-old boy will survive, but may lose an arm.

SARGODHA:

A landlord, who set a pack of vicious dogs on a nine-year-old boy earlier this week, will not face prosecution after both families struck a “compromise deal”, neighbours and police said on Thursday.

Police said that they did not register a case after the landlord’s family agreed to pay Rs21,000 in medical bills of the boy who is still convalescing in the district headquarters hospital in Sargodha. It is learnt that the “agreement” was the result of police manoeuvring and arm-twisting.

Hussain Karim’s face was mutilated after a landlord thought the punishment fit for “stealing” from his sugarcane field. Doctors said that the boy “will recover, but may also lose his right arm”.

Adnan Kareem, the boy’s father, said that they were passing through the fields in Chithri village (Chak 34-GB) when six dogs had attacked his son. The man and the boy live in the same village.

Dr Babar Nawaz said that Hussain would need extensive reconstructive surgery for his face. He said that the boy has already lost the use of four of his fingers in his right hand, adding that his nose had been torn off.

Kareem said that he had approached Civil Lines police station, but the police simply refused to file the case.

“They kept telling me I should drop the case. When I refused, they sent me away,” he said.

Station House Officer (SHO) Faiz Mehmood Karal claimed that he was “still investigating the matter”.

Several eyewitnesses said that they had seen the large dogs chasing the boy. “Sohna kept saying that the  boy was trespassing on his property and he had every right to have him chased (by his dogs). He said the boy had damaged his crops,” a neighbour said.

No case has yet been registered against the accused.





Published in The Express Tribune, July 22^nd, 2011.