Convoluted details: Robbery suspects sent on 14-day judicial remand

LAHORE:

A judicial magistrate sent five robbery suspects – three men and two women – on 14-day judicial remand on Sunday. 

Johar Town police had taken the suspects into custody and had seized valuables including a gold plating machine from them.

On Sunday, the counsel for the suspects said they were innocent and that the police had detained illegally at the Johar Town police station. He said this had been done in connivance with suspects’ rivals. The counsel said when they had filed a habeas corpus petition at the district and sessions court, the police said they had entered the suspects’ names in their journal (roznamcha). He said the police had implicated them in a false case to protect themselves from court proceedings.

The court sent the suspects on 14-days judicial remand. Talking to The Express Tribune one of their lawyers, Advocate Malik Muhammad Pervez said his clients had been kept in illegal detention for several days. When they filed a petition in the sessions court, the police registered an FIR against them. He said a jeweller close to the family had kept a machine at their house for safekeeping but the police had made it look like it was a criminal offence.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 13^th, 2015.