Order, order: Businessman goes to court over police intimidation

SHC expresses annoyance over state of affairs at police stations.

KARACHI: The Sindh police chief earned the ire of the Sindh High Court for not complying with its orders to report on the state of affairs of the Airport police station and was summoned for March 13.

The order came from a bench headed by Justice Ahmed Ali M Sheikh on Friday in a petition filed by a businessman, Muhammad Ali Jan, who has a cloth shop in Faisal Shopping Centre at Colony Gate, Karachi.

The petitioner, alleging harassment and intimidation by the Airport and CID police, maintained that a man named Irfan alias Baboo, the brother of ASI Akbar of Shah Faisal police station, who also had a shop in the same centre, had him implicated in three different FIRs. He has since been acquitted in them but a fourth FIR was lodged after he filed this petition.

The businessman said that a police team raided his shop and took away cloth worth three million rupees and that they were still intimidating him.

The bench had ordered an inquiry into the matter through SSP Niaz Khosa. The inquiry report indicated that the petitioner was involved in street crimes. Going through this report, the court held, however, that the police department was plagued with “dishonest” officials.

The bench expressed its concern over the state of affairs at the level of the police station which it called “deplorable”.

The police chief was told to “look into the dismal affairs of the Airport police station” and “to conduct an inquiry at his level and submit the report to court within a fortnight.”

The order was passed on January 11.

When the matter came up for hearing on Friday, the bench noted that its orders were not followed. It gave the police chief one last chance and ordered him to appear on March 13.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 27^th, 2012.