High horse: Witness to Layyah torture recounts the horror

The DPO’s report says those in the video cannot be identified.

MULTAN:

Following Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif’s orders seeking a report on a video showing police torture allegedly on the behest of a member of the Punjab Assembly in Layyah, a police official speaking on the condition of anonymity told The Express Tribune that the district police officer had told the chief minister that it was impossible to identify the people in the video, none of the present police staff had any knowledge of the video or the incident so it might be more than a year old, and there was no proof that the incident had taken place in Layyah. 

A resident of the area who said he had witnessed the incident spoke to media persons on Thursday claiming that the incident in fact did take place.

Karam Hussain Shah, 66, a land owner in Ashar village in Chobara sub-district, said he had witnessed the torture. He said the man in the video, Abdul Qadir Khosa, was a tenant on his lands and had worked on his fields for almost eight years.

He said about a month ago, Khosa was summoned by the police at the behest of MPA Qaisar Maghasi apparently because “Khosa had spoken to him in a disrespectful manner”.

Shah said the police had picked up Khosa from his fields and dragged him to the main road. He said Chobara SHO Yousaf Baloch was in the car and five policemen, four constables and an assistant sub-inspector had beaten Khosa up. Shah said that the video was genuine and the police knew it. “But no one will dare speak up against Maghsi who ordered that thrashing,” he said.

Maghsi has denied knowledge of the incident and has claimed that he is being politically victimised.

The Express Tribune has learnt that Khosa fled the village as well and now lives in a village in Taunsa, Dera Ghazi Khan.

Ashar’s son Zafar Hussain Ashar, 37, said that the police had  detained three peasants from their fields. The other two were Kausar and Altaf Hussain. They were picked up for trying to rescue Khosa. He said they too had been beaten up, but the video only showed one person being beaten up. He said the video was made to show Maghsi that they [policemen] had “taught Khosa a lesson”.

Layyah DPO Ghazi Salahuddin has said that an inquiry would be started only after Khosa came forward and asked for justice.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 6^th, 2014.