SSP Qureshi gets bail in trader’s house robbery case

A sessions court on Friday granted interim pre-arrest bail to former District South SSP Imran Qureshi in a case pertaining to a robbery during a raid on the house of a trader in Orangi Town last year.

Qureshi moved an application seeking bail before arrest after a judicial magistrate issued a non-bailable warrant for his arrest in the case. The additional district and sessions judge (West) approved the bail of the applicant subject to the submission of a Rs100,000 surety. The court fixed the matter on February 26 for confirmation or otherwise of the interim bail.

In his application, the SSP claimed innocence stating that the judicial magistrate’s February 13 order for issuing a non-bailable warrant for his arrest is “unjust, biased, prejudiced, illegal and unlawful”. He contended that co-accused had already been released on bail in the present case; therefore, he was also entitled to the same concession of bail under the rule of consistency.

On February 13, Judicial Magistrate (West) Muhammad Bilal had rejected the investigation officer’s recommendation to quash the case under ‘C class’ and took cognisance of the alleged offence against SSP Imran Qureshi, DSP Umair Tariq Bajari, police constables — Adil, Irshadullah, Khurram Ali, Faizan, Usman and Riaz Ahmed -- as well as against private persons — Izhar, Abdul Sattar, Mehfooz, Syed Sohail Ali, Kamran Shahrukh, Muneeb, Ihsan, Naveed, Abdul Latif and Sajjad Ahmed.

“There is sufficient material available on record which suggests the connection of accused with commission of crime and element of mistake of fact has not been found in the instant charge sheet which is one of the requirement of c class as per police rules 1934,” the magistrate observed.

He opined that the raid was a legal action, which lost its legality due to the accused not following the SOPs.

“It is a fact that the articles were taken without making a memo, without contacting the SHO of PS Peerabad, and later on were handed over by the SHO Defence without any memo. Such negligence of making a memo cannot be simple not following of SOPs. The interim charge sheet mentions that SSP Imran Qureshi was aware of acts of accused DSP and SSP and later on facilitated the handing over of articles without following procedures,” the judicial magistrate went on.

He said DSP Bajari’s refusal to give the pin code of his cellphone to collect evidence “draws adverse inference” against him, adding that these facts could only be determined during the trial through evidence.

The magistrate said there was no denial of the fact that the incident took place, adding that the complainant of the case gave a detailed account of events that happened that night and later affirmed the same fact when he identified accused persons during an identification parade.

Issuing non-bail warrants against SSP Qureshi and other accused who were said to have absconded and refrained from joining the investigation, he forwarded the case to a sessions court for trial with a direction to the IO to submit a list of witnesses within seven days.

In the final investigation report submitted under Section 173 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC), IO Balaghat sought disposal of the case under C class, stating that the complainant didn’t want to proceed with the case.

DSP Bajari and over a dozen other policemen and civilians were booked in September last year on charges of robbery, abduction, house trespass and wrongful confinement after they allegedly looted trader Shakir Khan’s home in Orangi Town and briefly kidnapped him and his brother Amir Khan before releasing them near the Baloch Colony flyover.