The two police officers were arrested by the Rawalpindi police because they were wanted in a criminal case registered against them in Saddar Bairuni police station for the disappearance of 11 men who had been acquitted of the charges of four terrorism cases in June.
The two officials appeared before the Supreme Court, which had taken up the petition filed by the relatives of the acquitted men who later disappeared. The apex court, however, had not ordered the arrest of the SP.
The Saddar Bairuni police confirmed that the Adiala jail chief and the DSP were arrested on the orders of the Lahore High Court (LHC) Rawalpindi Bench. The case was registered after the relatives of the 11 men pleaded before court that those acquitted had not been released despite the orders for their release, leading to registration of a criminal case against the two officials and their arrest.
Later, this order was suspended by a Division Bench of LHC, when SP Gondal pleaded innocent. Gondal told the court that certain facts registered in the four identical petitions about the disappearance of the acquitted men had not been taken into consideration. He claimed that the relatives of the prisoners had themselves said that the acquitted prisoners were picked up by the intelligence agencies after their release.
Dr Niaz Ahmed, Mazharul Haq, Shafiqur Rehman, Muhammad Aamir, Abdul Majid, Abdul Basit, Abdul Saboor, Shafiqe Ahmed, Said Arab, Gul Roze and Tehseenullah had been acquitted by the anti-terrorism courts in the cases of firing rockets at Kamra Air Base in Attock, suicide attack on a bus of an intelligence agency and firing anti-aircraft bullets on the plane of former President Pervez Musharraf.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 27th, 2010.
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