Illegal detention: Implicated cop walks free hours after conviction

Magistrate sentences former Pishtakhara SHO, sessions judge releases him on bail bonds.

PESHAWAR:

The court of a judicial magistrate on Friday sentenced a former SHO of Pishtakhara police station to three years imprisonment in an illegal detention case but within hours, his conviction was suspended by an additional district and sessions judge.

The accused, Arshad Khan, was suspected to have picked up Khairur Rehman from Academy Town on February 29, 2009 and since then Rehman has been missing. Later, his family moved the Supreme Court which ordered that an FIR be registered against the police official. Subsequently, a case was lodged at the Town police station on September 25, 2012.

The accused was charged under Section 365 (kidnapping or abducting with secret intent and wrongful confinement of a person) of the Pakistan Penal Code, 1860.

On Friday, judicial magistrate Zafarullah Mohmand announced his reserved judgment which found the accused guilty of the crime and sentenced him to three years in prison. However, soon after the verdict, Arshad Khan’s lawyer, Syed Sikandar Shah, filed a case in the court of Additional Sessions Judge Kaleem Arshad. The judge suspended the magistrate’s conviction and freed the accused after furnishing bail bonds.

Sikandar told the sessions court that the sentence was a short one and legal procedures were not followed, adding the accused was on bail during the trial of the case. The court then suspended the conviction and released the accused on bail after he furnished a surety bond of Rs80,000 and two personal bonds.

Brother of the detainee and complainant in the case, Saifullah, has directly charged the SHO. He said they hail from Bajaur Agency and due to the precarious security situation there, he, along with his brother Khairur Rehman and sister Khaista Jana, were living in Academy Town.

The complainant said in his report they were living on the upper storey of a rented house while an Afghan family was living downstairs. A police party, led by SHO Arshad Khan, raided the house and recovered a kidnapped child from the house of the Afghan family downstairs. The police also took Rehman and Khaista and her two children into custody.

Later, the police released the woman and her two children but Rehman was not freed. The SHO assured the complainant many times that his brother would be freed after interrogation but that did not happen.

The accused SHO was arrested on August 30, 2013 after District and Sessions Judge Shaiber Khan rejected his pre-arrest bail. However, on October 15, 2013, former Peshawar High Court chief justice Dost Muhammad Khan granted bail to the accused after he submitted two surety bonds worth Rs200,000 each.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 24^th, 2014.