Two months on: Police finally arrest alleged Vehari rapist

Muhammad Ramzan, 18, had gone missing on Nov 1, 2012.

MULTAN:

More than two months after the criminal assault on a teenage boy, the police have arrested the main suspect, identified by the victim before he died.

The victim’s family had earlier said that they had “lost all hope in the police” and had threatened self-immolation in front of the Punjab chief minister’s office in Lahore if justice was not served.

Eighteen-year-old Muhammad Ramzan, a resident of 435/EB of Burewala in Vehari district, was kidnapped on November 1, 2012. He was found lying unconscious in a field the next day. Ramzan died early morning on November 3, 2012.

Over two months later – on Sunday, January 20, the police arrested Ali Raza Chiller – one of the two men Ramzan had identified before he died. Two other suspects were also arrested but then released. They, however, were told not to leave the town, the investigation officer Abdul Sattar told The Express Tribune. The police are conducting raids to arrest three other suspects.

Police also confirmed that they would also send swab samples of the suspect for a DNA test.

The arrests come more than two months after the incident. Ramzan used to work as a tandoorwala at a roadside hotel. His employee was the last person to see him alive. He told the police that Ramzan had borrowed Rs50 from him and left the hotel at about 5:30 pm on November 1, 2012. He did not reach home that night.

The next day, at around 7:30 pm, a milkman - Mohammad Adnan, was on his way home when his motorcycle’s wheels hit something on a muddy path in a field near the national highway. It was someone’s legs. Adnan told The Express Tribune he recognised Ramzan because they lived in the same neighbourhood. “He was unconscious. His shirt was torn shirt and he was naked from the waist down,” Adnan said. Ramzan had bruises all over his body but he was not bleeding. Adnan took Ramzan to his family’s house.

The family then took him to the Tehsil Headquarters Hospital – 22 kilometres from the victim’s house. They said Ramzan was unconscious the entire time but appeared to be stable. His family decided to take him home at around 11 pm.



According to the family, Ramzan regained consciousness a couple of hours later. That is when he identified the two men who had assaulted him, his father Akram Baloch said. Ramzan told his family that there had been seven men in all who had criminally assaulted him. Soon after this statement, Ramzan started throwing up and also vomited blood, after which he was taken to the hospital around 3 am. He died shortly after.

The family registered an FIR with the Saddar police the same day.

The autopsy was conducted on the same day by Dr Tasadduq Baloch who informed that they were waiting on the pathologist’s report from Lahore before they could confirm if he had been poisoned and if so, the nature of the poison.

According to Baloch, the duty doctor on the night of November 3, 2012, Dr Masood, had noted in the register that the boy had been throwing up and foaming at the mouth when he was brought to the emergency.

Baloch said the report from the government forensic laboratory in Multan had confirmed that Ramzan had been gang raped.

For two months, alleges the family, the police did nothing. “They kept on calling us and Ali Raza Chiller for questioning but did not arrest him,” says Ali Baloch, Ramzan’s 22-year-old brother. The family wrote twice to the DPO, asking him to take notice of the incident. The second letter was submitted to the DPO’s Office on December 30 by Ramzan’s mother.

It was after this that the DPO Vehari Shakir Hussain took action. Hussain said that he received the application submitted by Parveen Akhtar, Ramzan’s mother. “We expanded the investigation, following which we arrested the main suspect Ali Raza Chiller,” said Hussain. During interrogation, Raza told the police that he had four accomplices, the DPO said. Teams have been constituted to arrest them.

The DPO said the police would wait for the pathologist’s report before adding murder to the charges against the suspects.

Bashir Khan Baloch, a sub-inspector (SI) and the investigation officer before Sattar, had earlier said that the police had not arrested anyone “because it is a murder case”. “We cannot arrest any one just like that,” he said.

Two weeks ago Baloch was transferred and Abdul Sattar, SI, took over the investigation. When contacted, Sattar refused to comment on an ongoing investigation.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 27^th, 2013.