Police torture case: After threats, victim’s widow seeks SC’s attention

Claims police are protecting their own, threatening to file false cases against her if she does not reconcile.

ISLAMABAD:

The police tortured her husband to death two months ago. Now Sumera Bibi, mother of four, is accusing officials from the same police station of threatening her with “grave consequences”.

“They (the police) want me to forgive the people who killed my husband. They ruined my family and now they want to get off scot free. I want justice,” said Bibi, a resident of Daska in Sialkot District. She has sought Supreme Court’s intervention in the arrest of the police officers suspected of killing her husband, 42-year-old Saadat Ali, a carpenter by profession.

She has filed an application with the Supreme Court asking the top judge to help her get justice.

There is strong evidence against the police officials nominated in the murder case filed by Ali’s brother. But even after the lapse of two months, the police’s investigation team headed by Superintendent of Police (Rural) Sardar Sadaqat Ali has failed to arrest the main suspects.

Only one police officer from Sabzi Mandi Police Station, Assistant Sub Inspector (ASI) Gul Khan, was arrested and sent to jail. He was investigating the case in which Ali was picked up for ‘interrogation’ and was later allegedly tortured at the office of then-Sub Divisional Police Officer (SDPO) Industrial Area Police ASP Dr Khalil Ahmed.

Ahmed, SP Ishaq Warraich and Sabzi Mandi SHO Asjad Ali were all nominated in the FIR registered in the I-9 Police Station.



None of them were ever arrested.

ASP Ahmed, the main suspect, was declared a proclaimed offender after his bail expired, said a police officer. “He is on the run,” he added, saying that Ahmed’s four bodyguards and other officials accused of assisting in torturing Ali were arrested, but later released.

“The police have only arrested low-ranking officials. They are not ready to arrest the officers involved in the case,” Bibi alleged in her application made to the Supreme Court registrar.

She further said they she and her close family friends have received threatening calls and messages from different sources close to the suspected police officers. “They are threatening to kidnap my children and create fake cases against me and our family friends in Islamabad if I pursue the case and do not agree to reconciliation,” said Bibi.

In her application to Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chuadhry, Bibi said that Ali was arrested in a false case and the police used him as a scapegoat. Ali was working as a carpenter in the evenings and as a lower staff member o the Pakistan Public Works Department (PWD) during the day. He was living in Sector I-10/2.

ASP Dr Ahmed himself had admitted before the media that Ali was innocent. Bibi said Ali was the only bread earner for the family. The police probe team has not yet even submitted a challan in the court against the suspected police officers so that they could be officially charged.

“They are pressurising me and my relatives for reconciliation, asking us to take money and withdraw the case,” said Bibi. “But I don’t want the money. I just want the police officers who killed my husband to be arrested and punished.”

Published in The Express Tribune, December 2^nd, 2012.