Protests: Road blocked against illegal detention of minor

Jafar, 17, was picked up by the police, who demanded his father pay a bribe for his release.

ABBOTABAD:


Protesters, on Thursday, blocked Mansehra Road against the illegal detention of a boy by the local police and demanded action against a sub-inspector (SI).


Carrying placards, they chanted slogans against the local police and lit fires on the road, suspending traffic for over an hour.

While addressing the protesters, the majority of whom were from Mangal, his native village in Abbottabad, Muhammad Haroon said his son Jafar, 17, had been picked up by officials from Mangal police post on unknown charges.

“I went to the police post along with some elders of the village and met SI Javed to request him to either release my son or produce him before a judicial magistrate as mandated by law, Haroon said.

The SI demanded Rs10,000 for freeing his son, who had recently returned from Karachi. Haroon accused the SI of shifting his son to an unknown location because he had failed to pay illegal gratification.

Left with only one option, Haroon filed a complaint before the district judge Abbottabad and requested the court to recover his son from illegal custody. When the bailiff went to Mangal police post, the police had already shifted the detainee to some other place.

“I’m worried about my son’s safety,” he added. The protesting father demanded suo motu action by chief justice Peshawar High Court and severe punishment for the police official who illegally detained his son.

The protesters dispersed peacefully after the police assured them justice would be served. When approached for comments, SI Javed denied detaining Jafar.


The complainant was an ex-police official and since he had exchanged hot words with him, he made up the story about his son, the SI said.

Unrecorded detention, preventing detainees from contacting family and lawyers and subjecting them to torture is quite common as law enforcement agencies break the law with impunity, according to Adeel Ahmed a human rights activist working against custodial abuses in Hazara.

He said a person could not be detained for more than 24 hours without entering his name in the register and in case of a juvenile, he should be immediately shifted to jail or handed over to a probation officer.

Relatives accuse doctors of negligence

Meanwhile, relatives of a man, who died allegedly due to the negligence of doctors, blocked the Karakoram Highway by placing his body in the middle of the road on Thursday afternoon, demanding that a case be registered against them.

Police and family sources said Muhammad Riaz of Muslimabad was sitting on the roadside when a speeding car, reportedly carrying two policemen from the Muslimabad police post, critically injured him. He was taken to Ayub Medical Complex, where a doctor referred him to the neurosurgical ward.

However, according to his family, none of the neurosurgeons including Dr Sajid Nazir Bhati, Dr Ahsan Aurangzeb and other senior doctors attended to him, resulting in his death two hours later.

The furious relatives blocked the Karakoram Highway in front of the hospital, suspending traffic for over an hour. They chanted slogans against the doctors who were alledgedly responsible for Riaz’s death.

After the police assured them of conducting an investigation and registering a case against the doctors, the protesters cleared the road for traffic and took the body home for burial.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 10th, 2012.
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