Woman says son wrongly arrested

The mother of a tailor has sought justice from the city’s police chief claiming that policemen who had arrested and allegedly beaten her son for keeping his shop open for 15 minutes over the lockdown deadline.

Rukhsana Parveen, a resident of Railway Scheme 9, has complained with the Rawalpindi City Police Officer (CPO) Ahsan Younus on Monday, claiming that police wrongly arrested her son Saqib Hameed.

The widow said that her household is dependent on the earnings of her son, who is a tailor.

She told CPO that one day police arrived at her son’s shop at around 7:15 pm and asked why it was still open. Hameed replied that he was about to shut it down and was gotten delayed by 10 minutes because of a customer.

However, the police demanded bribe worth Rs5,000 from him to look the other way. When Hameed told the policemen that he did not have enough money, the personnel brought down the amount of the backhander to Rs2,000. But, the tailor still insisted that he didn’t have what the police were demanding.

Therefore, Hameed was bundled into the back of a police van and was taken to a picket where he was allegedly beaten. The police seized Rs1,200 they found in the victim’s pocket as well.

The victim kept imploring the police to impose a minimum penalty and let him go and that he will strictly implement the timings. However, the police instead registered an FIR against him and altered the time to 11pm instead of 7:15pm.

The complainant said that she additionally bore the burden of Rs30,000 for his son’s bail and had to struggle a lot to being an elderly single parent.

The CPO has ordered an inquiry into the matter and directed the officers concerned help the elderly woman get justice.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 21^st, 2020.