LAHORE: The Lahore High Court directed Ferozwala police on Friday to exclude the names of three people from the FIR on the kidnapping of 13-year-old Saadia.
The court observed that the people had clearly been implicated to create an illusion of efficiency to gloss over the fact of the police’s failure to recover the girl and arrest the culprits.
Justice Ijaz Ahmed Chaudhry ordered DSP Nazar Abbas to ensure the registration of the FIR in line with the statement of Saadia’s mother, Kausar, and to nominate only those she had identified as suspects.
Earlier, Advocate Muhammad Azhar Siddique, the Judicial Activism Panel chairman, submitted that the police were harassing the complainant and those supporting her. He said the police appeared to have been taking money from the accused. Further, he said that the police appeared to have developed a grudge against the petitioner for taking the matter before the LHC.
The DSP had submitted that the police had arrested three people named in the FIR and were raiding more places to arrest the remaining seven and to recover the child.
The judge asked the DSP to ensure that the child was recovered. If she was hurt, the DSP would be held personally responsible considering she was kidnapped due to slackness on the part of the police after the court’s direction for her protection. The judge ordered the DSP to recover the girl and produce her before the court by August 10.
Saadia’s mother, Kausar said that the investigation officer of Narang Mandi Sub-Inspector Riaz, had forced her to name, as suspects, three people he agreed to treat as suspects. She said four of the people who had been named as accused, namely Saleem, Basharat, Mahmood and Azam, were not involved in kidnapping her daughter. They were, in fact, helping her. She said they were also the ones who had helped her bring this matter to the LHC but the police, acting on its own, had arrested them and nominated them in the FIR.
The police registered the FIR under Section 365-B of the PPC against 10 named and two unidentified people for kidnapping Saadia from her home on July 25.
The LHC had issued orders to the police on July 22 not to harass the victim or her relatives, and to provide protection to her and her mother.
In her petition, Saadia had submitted that her father Irshad Ahmed and brother-in-law Mahboob Ahmed were forcing her to marry a 55-year-old labourer Ijaz in exchange for Rs70,000. She escaped that marriage by running away from her house on July 19, the fixed date for her wedding. She said the two were threatening and harassing her and her mother with help from the police who were conducting raids at their behest to ‘recover’ her.
Saadia had been separated from her mother three months ago when her brother-in-law Mahboob Ahmed threw her mother and other siblings out of the family home.
Published in The Express Tribune, July 31st, 2010.
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