Illegal detention: With arrest despite court orders, top cops face contempt action

Ex-MPA’s former son-in-law tells court of 23-hour ordeal from Karachi to Khairpur.

KARACHI: The former son-in-law of an ex-MPA has gone to court after he was booked in an allegedly false case, dragged to Khairpur only to be returned to Karachi after a 22-hour ordeal as the police there refused to take custody.

A matrimonial dispute has turned acrimonious for Fahad Rasool, the owner of a private security agency, who was married to the daughter of former MPA Zafar Iqbal Bilal, who recently quit PML-Functional and joined the Pakistan Peoples Party. According to Rasool, his former father-in-law had him booked in five different FIRs, including once registered at the A Section police station in Khairpur.

Rasool went to the Sindh High Court to have these cases thrown out. He was exempted from being prosecuted in the FIRs and appearing in the cases until a court decided whether to quash them or not.

However, despite these court orders, he was picked up on January 8 this year. Rasool alleges that the orders for his arrest were passed by the inspector general. He was taken by a police team allegedly led by an ASI Zahid. According to Rasool’s application, Zafar Iqbal Bilal was passing orders to the raiding police team.

The ASI disclosed to Rasool that Anti-Violent Crime Cell SP Ghulam Subhani had ordered his arrest on the directives of the IGP. The police were told that Rasool was on the run in a criminal case. After he was picked up, Rasool says he was taken to the AVCC cell at the police’s Garden headquarters. From there he was taken to Khairpur in a rented Corolla car and produced before the A Section police.

But the A Section police refused to take him into custody. They said that they had already told an SHC bench, in writing, that the FIR filed against Rasool was false. The Khairpur police didn’t want to take Rasool also because they knew that the SHC was already exempted from appearing in the case.

The Karachi police team had no choice but to bring Rasool back, and after 23 hours in illegal confinement and in defiance of court orders, he was released.

Rasool has thus gone to court, giving details of what happened to him in his appeal.

On Tuesday, Justice Salman Hamid of the Sindh High Court ordered for show-cause notices for January 25 to be issued on the charge of alleged contempt against Sindh Inspector General of Police Mushtaq Shah, Anti-Violent Crime Cell SP Ghulam Subhani and the former MPA, Zafar Iqbal Bilal.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 18^th, 2012.