ISLAMABAD:
It can take as long as two weeks just to register a straightforward case in the federal capital.
Siraj Ahmad, a resident of Bhara Kahu, learnt this the hard way when he visited the Aabpara Police Station on October 30 a day after a car hit his 11-year-old niece and broke her leg in Sector G-6.
“It took 17 days to get the first investigation report (FIR) for the incident registered,” Ahmad said. “During the first week, the police officers did not cooperate with us at all. They were using delaying tactics.”
Ahmad said the FIR, which is in his older brother’s name, was only registered after they brought the issue to a senior police official’s knowledge through a personal contact.
Aabpara’s Station House Officer (SHO) Jamshed Khan, however, blamed the complainant for the delay.
Khan, who is also the subject of an ongoing inquiry for thrashing a private security guard in the Aabpara Market in October a day before Eidul Azha, said Ahmad and his family did not contact the police immediately after the incident.
“They (the complainants) never informed us,” Khan told The Express Tribune over the phone. “They kept the case to themselves.”
The investigating officer, Sub Inspector Riaz, backed up Khan’s version. He said the complainants only contacted the police on November 14.
That is when the FIR was registered, Riaz said. He said the medical report has been received after a delay caused by the Ashura holidays, and that the police will carry out proceedings against the car and its driver.
Ahmad has a different story, though. He said he visited the police station the day after the incident, but instead of registering his FIR, police officials asked him to get the medical report from Polyclinic Hospital, where the girl was provided treatment.
As it is standard practice for the police to get the report from the hospital’s medico-legal officer themselves, Ahmad thinks these were delaying tactics.
“They made me do several rounds of the police station and the hospital during the first week,” he said.
The case is further complicated because of the nature of the other party involved. The car’s driver, Ahmad, alleged, has some connections with the some sensitive agencies.
Ahmad said the police failed to call the man who was driving the car at the time of the accident to the police station, even though Ahmad and his family had identified the car and its owners.
The car’s driver did send a representative to the police station to negotiate with Ahmad’s family. He said the SHO took the perpetrators’ side instead of holding them accountable.
Ahmad is not the only person who has faced difficulties in getting an FIR registered at the Aabpara police station.
On October 19, Wajid Afridi, who lives in Peshawar, was visiting Islamabad. He parked his car next to the back wall of the Aabpara Police Station and went to have dinner at the Melody Food Park. When he returned around 10pm his car was gone.
Even though the car was stolen from right next to the police station, SHO Khan refused to register the FIR. He even doubted the veracity of Afridi’s concern.
He flatly said, “I don’t believe the car was stolen,” Afridi recalled.
Khan first tried to pin the blame on Afridi, and later dismissively said, “So many cars are stolen every day, what can we do about it?”
The FIR was registered after a week at the same police station, but not before Afridi made a few calls to higher officials.
Shedding further light on the allegations that the Aabpara SHO has been slacking, a senior police official revealed that a few days back, City Superintendent of Police Captain (retd) Muhammad Ilyas wrote a letter to Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Farooq Yasin citing at least three incidents of negligence on Khan’s part in addition to allegations that a numbers-based gambling racket has restarted in the Melody Market area.
The source said no action was taken on the letter because SHO Khan has the backing of an influential person who is a close relative of a member of the federal cabinet.
On Monday, SSP Yasin directed police officials to note down the contact number of the complainant in the FIR, so that police officers can personally contact the complainant and monitor the progress of investigation, according to a press release issued by the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT).
It is uncertain how effective this new order might be as Islamabad residents face difficulties in registering police cases in the first place.
With additional reporting by Express News Reporter Qamarul Munawwar
Published in The Express Tribune, November 27th, 2012.
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