SHO beaten to death by villagers

Policemen were answering 15 call of land grab attempt.

LAHORE:

The Hadiara station house officer answering an emergency call was beaten to death by a group of men in a border village at Burki Road on Saturday.

The police said that SHO Arshad Chaddhar had travelled to Gavind village with four other policemen after getting a report on police helpline 15 that a land dispute in the village threatened to erupt into violence. The dispute was between the so-called Taari group, consisting of Arain men, and a Pathan group.

A day earlier 14 people, mainly women and children, were shot and burnt in their homes in Gujranwala in an ongoing blood feud that began as a land dispute.

The police said that the SHO and his men had warned the Arain group, of whom there were over a dozen, to back off. Their rival group had only a few men. The alleged land grabbers then attacked the police party with stones and clubs. Villagers also reported hearing aerial firing. The police party called for back-up, but by the time it arrived the SHO was dead and the Pathan group men that had made the 15 call had fled. A police van was also vandalised.

Deputy Inspector General (Operations) Ghulam Mahmood Dogar and Crimes Investigation Agency Superintendent of Police Umer Virk later visited the scene. Dogar told reporters that the police had arrested 22 people in a sweep of the village and they believed they had all the attackers in custody. He said that the killers appeared to have no criminal record.

The SHO’s body was sent to the Mayo Hospital mortuary. Investigation officer Muhammad Ramazan said that he appeared to have died of head wounds.

Chaddhar was a resident of Nankana Sahib and had a daughter and a son in the first year in FC College Lahore. He was recently transferred to Hadiara from Sheikhupura and this was his first posting as SHO, at age 50.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 1^st, 2012.