Wrong FIR registration: RPO orders cases against four cops

They had registered case against assault complainant who later died.

MULTAN:

The Shujabad regional police officer has ordered SSP (Operations) Gohar Nafees to arrest four policemen, including a station house officer, for favouring the accused in an assault case.

The policemen allegedly ignored a complaint of assault against some landlords lodged by a peasant from his death bed and instead registered a case against the victim and his family.

An FIR was registered on Monday against SHO Akhtarul Islam, Sub Inspector Abdul Lateef and ASI Munir Ahmed under Section 155-C of the Police Ordinance 2002 (wilful breach or neglect of  law). Police also registered a murder case against the four accused in the case.

Earlier, City Police Officer Amir Zulfiqar Khan issued suspension orders of the Shujabad City SHO and two other policemen for showing the plaintiff as the accused and vice versa in the FIR.

The orders were given after the family of the deceased peasant, who was allegedly beaten up by a local landlord, his son and two others and later abandoned in the fields on November 23, protested against the police and a doctor’s alleged negligence.

The peasant had been in the hospital since the incident. He died on Sunday. Police said the post-mortem examination report revealed that the man had been beaten, but had not been attacked by dogs, as he had earlier claimed.



The peasant, Muhammad Hanif, had told the police that he was called by landlord Allah Bakhsh to his dera. He said the landlord told him to tell his brother-in-law to pay Bakhsh for the land he had rented from him. He said when he refused to get involved in the matter, Bakhsh and his son, Asif, beat him up. He said they tied him to a tree and let their dogs loose on him.

When he was almost unconscious, Hanif said, they abandoned him in the nearby fields. He had told the police that some residents of the area found him the next morning and took him to the tehsil headquarters hospital in Shujabad.

Police said that at the hospital, Hanif was checked by Dr Aurangzeb, who said that Hanif had not been attacked by dogs. He said he had inflicted the bruises and injuries on himself.

They said taking advantage of the medical report, Bakhsh filed an application against Hanif and nine others, including Hanif’s wife, sister and mother, for implicating him and his son in a fake assault case.  Bakhsh had alleged that the wounds on Hanif’s body were self-inflicted.



Hanif was shifted to Nishtar Hospital on November 26 in critical condition and died there on Sunday.

The family of the deceased later placed the body in front of the Saddar police station and staged a protest against the police and the doctor. They also accused MPA Rana Ijaz Noon of the PML-Q Forward Bloc of supporting the landlords. The protesters blocked the road and demanded police register cases against the accused and the policemen concerned.

Sofia, the wife of the deceased, warned that she would set herself on fire if the culprits were not arrested.

The protesters dispersed when former PML-N MPA Mujahid Ali Shah arrived at the scene and assured the protesters that he would take up the issue before the chief minister. The RPO also arrived and told them that the culprits would be arrested in 24 hours.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 11^th, 2012.