Accused in torture case alleges police’s partiality

Sheikh Danish tells court he is being treated as if he is a foreign spy

CHAK JHUMRA:

The court has given the police remand of the main accused in the student torture case, Sheikh Danish, for another three days on Tuesday.

Magistrate Naveedur Rahman heard the case through a video link because Sheikh Danish had not been brought to the court due to security concerns.

The SHO of the Women Police Station had requested the court to conduct hearing either online or at the district jail.

During the previous appearance of the accused in the court, lawyers and citizens had tortured the accused.

Meanwhile, during the hearing, the plaintiff’s counsel and police requested the court to order conduct of a DNA test of the accused, Sheikh Danish.

During the hearing, the accused told the court that he was being treated as if he were a spy of an enemy country.

“I am being humiliated for no reason,” he told the court.

He asked the court why the police had been asking for his remand again and again.

Sheikh Danish told the court that Khadija was not his daughter's friend.

“I am not being treated well,” he told the court.

The accused said that if the police wanted his DNA test done, then they must do it. Why the police had not done it in the last six days, he asked.

Rana Ikhlaq, the lawyer of Sheikh Danish, told the court that his client was not being allowed to see his relatives.

He too asked the court why the police had been seeking further remand of his client.

The lawyer told the court that Sheikh Danish himself was a father of a girl, and his daughter was being harassed.

Rana Ikhlaq said that the accused had two factories, and why he would blackmail a girl for Rs500,000 and two mobile phones.

“More than eight hundred workers are working in a factory of my client’s,” said the lawyer of the accused.

The lawyer of the accused wondered why a medical examination of Khadija was being done again.

If Khadija had been raped, it would have been proved in the first medical examination, he added.

The lawyer of Khadija requested the court to order conducting of a DNA test of the accused.

After hearing the arguments of both sides, the court granted police three-day physical remand of the accused.

Earlier, the Islamabad High Court (IHC) has granted protective bail to Ana Ali Sheikh, the daughter of Sheikh Danish, who is the main suspect in the Khadija torture case, on submission of security bonds of Rs25,000 and ordered Ana Ali Sheikh to approach the Faisalabad court within four days.

The court also reprimanded Ana Ali Sheikh for her false statement in the court.

Ana Ali Sheikh had filed an application at the IHC for a protective bail on Friday afternoon through her counsel in which she stated that she had been living with her mother and grandmother in Islamabad for the past two years.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 24^th, 2022.