Officers referred to CCPO for charging suspect with same crime again

‘Inspector, SHO and DSP of Shadman police were negligent in preparing challan’.

LAHORE:

Additional District and Sessions Judge Muhammad Anwar Butt on Saturday urged the capital city police officer (CCPO) to take action against Shahdara police officers who had arrested and challaned a man in a case that had already been disposed of.

The judge ordered the release of Muhammad Tazeem after his father Muhammad Yaseen presented a copy of the disposal order from the trial in November 2008. The judge said that Inspector Mian Shafqat, who arrested Tazeem on February 6, SHO Maqsood Ahmed, who prepared the challan, and DSP Nasir Mehmood Khan, who forwarded the challan to the court, were guilty of negligence and misconduct.

Tazeem and other accused were released on November 14, 2008, after they reached a compromise with the complainants in a murder case. They had been charged under Sections 302 (murder), 324 (attempted murder), 148 (rioting with a deadly weapon) and 149 (unlawful assembly) of the Pakistan Penal Code.

Tazeem was arrested by Inspector Shafqat on February 5 and presented before a judicial magistrate, who remanded him in custody for 14 days.

DSP Khan told The Express Tribune that the record of the case had not been updated. He said that the police file did not indicate that the accused had been released. It identified Tazeem as a proclaimed offender, he said, and that’s why he had been arrested. He said that Tazeem had not told the police or the magistrate about the settlement of the case.

He said that the investigation officer in the case when it was up for trial should have updated the file. “The IO did not do his duty and mention in the police record that the case had been settled,” he said.

Mian Shafaqat, who is now DSP at the City Kotwali Crimes Investigation Agency, also blamed the then investigation officer for the incident.

But Yaseen, Tazeem’s father, said that the police were lying when they said that they had not been told of the case’s disposal. He said that he had told the police officers that his son could not be arrested in the case, but they refused to listen.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 15^th, 2012.