High court decrees CIA to pay Rs5m for torturing man to death

On Tuesday, 27 years after a young man was tortured to death by Crime Investigation Agency (CIA) officials at the CIA Centre in Saddar, the Sindh High Court (SHC) decreed that the victim’s family would be paid Rs5 million.

The victim’s father, Mohammad Sarwar, said in his complaint that 24-year-old Chaudhry Shakeel was picked up by CIA officials from Jodia Bazaar on April 25, 1990 and taken to the CIA Centre, where he was brutally tortured to death.

Sarwar said that to cover up their heinous, illegal act, the officials lodged a bogus FIR claiming that his son was arrested for carrying an unlicensed weapon. He sought Rs5 million in damages for torturing his son to death.

He sued the home secretary, the IGP, the CIA DIG, the CIA through its chief, the then SSP Samiullah Marwat, the then CIA DSP, Inspector Chaudhry Mohammad Latif, Assistant Sub-Inspector Altaf Hussain, head constables Hamid Mehmood and Malik Riaz Awan, and police constables Shoaib, Shakil, Tanvir and Ashiq.

While the defendants did not deny Shakeel being in the CIA’s custody, they claimed that the detainee had died a natural death because of an asthmatic illness leading to a cardiac arrest. The additional advocate general told the court that Inspector Chaudhry Mohammad Latif had passed away, and that Head Constable Malik Riaz Awan and Constable Shakil had been murdered.

The SHC’s single bench headed by Justice Mohammad Faisal Kamal Alam said articles 2A and 27 and the Principles of Policy (articles 29 to 40) made the country’s constitution a unique and pragmatic social contract of a Muslim polity.

Justice Alam added that according to the grundnorm (basic norm), the rulers and others in authority and at the helm of affairs were saddled with the obligation to treat citizens with benevolence and justice as well as punishing culprits to restore the confidence of the common man in the state’s institutions. “This follows that a despot or tyrant can’t be a ruler of a Muslim polity or state.”

Referring to the Islamic jurisprudence term of ‘Ulil Amr’ (those in authority), the bench said if a common man was bound to follow orders of Ulil Amr in a Muslim polity, then the Ulil Amr were also under a religious and a constitutional obligation for their acts, deeds and decisions to be just, fair and reasonable, adding that the Muslim polity should be treated with benevolence, justice and care while criminals and wrongdoers should not go unpunished.

The court said the government in a Muslim polity or state had to dispense justice, adding that if the government, its ministers and high officials, after acquiring knowledge about the plight of citizens, particularly where a valuable human life was lost and conducive evidence was against government functionaries, failed to address grievances of citizens, then it was not difficult to observe that the government of the day as well as senior government functionaries had failed to discharge their function in accordance with the constitutional mandate.

The bench said a concerned elected representative of a particular constituency or area where a gruesome incident had taken place did nothing to remedy a wrong, then it meant that the elected representative had not discharged their duty towards their constituents with honesty.

After perusal of the inquiry report of the judicial officer, the SHC said negligence of police officials was proved in the case, and decreed that the police officials jointly and severally and the defendants should pay Rs5 million to the family of the deceased, together with the markup of 10 per cent.