DSP to investigate Khanewal torture case

Punjab IG police takes notice of alleged torture of a servant by his employers and police in a village in Khanewal.

KHANEWAL: The Punjab Inspector General of Police on Thursday took notice of the alleged torture of a servant by his employers and the police in a village in Khanewal.

He deputed Javed Khan, the Mian Channu deputy superintendent of police (DSP), to probe the allegations and file a report. Khanewal Superintendent of Police (SP), Naeemul Hasan Babar, told The Express Tribune that the DSP reached the village 90 15-L and recorded in statements of the aggrieved family.

The family of Muhammad Hussain, the employee, had accused Rana Javed, the landlord at whose dera Hussain worked in village no102 15-L, of detaining him at the Chab Kalan police station and torturing him for six days from October 6 to October 12. Hussain’s mother said that the torture resulted in damage to his spine, owing to which he cannot move or talk. He was released, the mother said, on October 8 after the family paid Rs60,000 to the employer. “On seeing Hussain’s condition, his father Abdul Ghafoor was so despondent he took poison,” she said. She added that Ghafoor was taken to the district headquarters (DHQ) hospital in Khanewal. The doctors, she said, discharged him after three days saying that the poison had spread throughout his body. “He could die any day,” she said.

Rana Javed told The Express Tribune that Hussain and three unidentified men broke into his house and stole jewelry and cash worth Rs200,000. He said he registered an FIR against him at Chamb police station on October 8. He said he did not register the FIR for six days as he was trying to extract the stolen amount on his own. He said Hussain admitted stealing the amount and put his thumb print on a confession written on a stamp paper. Hussain’s mother, however, claims that the employer and the police physically coerced his son to sign the stamp paper.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 15^th, 2010.