Access to justice: Family faces police wrath over charge against cops

Police accused of faking evidence to clear colleagues, threatening Christian family.

FEROZEWALA:

A Christian family here is considering skipping town because they fear retribution from a group of policemen they are trying to have prosecuted for a brutal assault on a young man.

Ameen Masih accused police investigators of faking evidence in order to clear colleagues of charges that they had beaten his son so badly that they broke his leg.

“It has become very difficult for us to stay here,” said Masih, a resident of Sharqpur in Ferozewala tehsil, Sheikhupura district. “The police have been threatening us, saying they will teach us a lesson for going after them.”

Thugs

Masih said that on May 3, Sub Inspector Mian Muhammad Afzal, Constables Mahmoodur Rehman, Waseem Ahmed and Tanveer Chohan, and Razakar Raju, all of Sharqpur police station, grabbed his son Shehzad just outside their house in Sharakpur city. They accused him of drinking alcohol and set upon him with the butts of their rifles, he said.

Shehzad is currently in Sheikhupura District Headquarters hospital, recovering from a fractured right femur and various other injuries, according to a medico-legal report available with The Express Tribune.

Masih said that he went to the station to demand that a case be registered against the policemen, but he was turned away.

He turned to the courts, which ordered a medical examination of Shehzad, and eventually that a first information report be registered against the five cops under Sections 337-F6 and L2, and 147/148 of the Pakistan Penal Code.

Masih said that he and his family had been threatened several times and told to withdraw the complaint. Because they resisted, he said, the officers involved in the investigation had put fake entries in the police station’s daily record, referred to as the roznamcha, giving the accused cops alibis for the night of the beating.

“The investigation has been one-sided. The police officials weren’t suspended. Nor did they bother to get bail,” he said. “The investigation officer didn’t even hear us.”

Masih said that he had submitted a complaint to Sheikhupura District Police Officer Afzal Mahmood Butt reporting that the accused police officials were making death threats against him and his family, but the DPO had not paid any heed.

His lawyer, Advocate Aslam Ameer Sahotra, added: “The police went the extra mile to protect their men. My clients demand justice and we will approach the courts.”

Sub Inspector Safdar Paevaiz, the investigation officer, insisted that the five accused cops had done nothing wrong.

He also claimed to have contacted the complainants several times asking that they come to the station to record their statements, but they had not turned up. He said he had recommended that the FIR be discharged as the accusations were “baseless and fabricated”.

Ferozewala Deputy Superintendent of Police Naveed Irshad said that he had sought a report on the case and he would decide whether or not the FIR would be cancelled after he went through it. “The decision will be made purely on merit. No police official is above the law and if they are guilty, they will have to face the music,” he said.



Published in The Express Tribune, July 24^th, 2011.