A station house officer (SHO) was suspended on Sunday along with some members of his police party and booked in a murder case that was registered against him at his own police station after a young man died under mysterious circumstances in police custody.
SHO of the Taimuria police station Chaudhry Tufail and at least four personnel of his police party were booked and arrested following an alleged custodial murder of a 21-year-old man, Bilal, who, according to the SHO and his team, was a street criminal. The suspect was arrested in an injured state after an exchange of fire in the limits of the Taimuria police station on the night between Thursday and Friday.
Bilal, however, later died under mysterious circumstances in police custody inside a lock-up of the Taimuria police station on the following night. Following his mysterious death, several of his family members, relatives and friends gathered outside the police station and staged a protest against the custodial death of the detained youth, demanding a strict action against the policemen responsible for it.
Some leaders of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) also joined the protesters and condemned the incident. They demanded an immediate registration of a murder case and arrests of the policemen concerned, including the police station chief.
“The black sheep in the police department are killing people and no one should be given a licence for extrajudicial killings,” said PTI leader Haleem Adil Shaikh, while talking to media persons during a protest.
Following the protest over the controversial killing, additional IG Karachi Dr Amir Shaikh immediately took a notice and appointed Zone West police chief DIG Amin Yousufzai as an inquiry officer of the case and ordered him to probe into the cause of the death and fix responsibility for it.
An FIR No 50/19 under Sections 302/34 (murder) was registered at the Taimuria police station on behalf of the victim’s brother, Bilawal Humayun, against SHO Tufail and his police party. “The police kidnapped me and my brother from the Hyderi area,” the complainant claimed. “The policemen later dropped me on the Super Highway but didn’t release my brother and took him away with them to an unknown location.”
Police officials investigating the case said that all the policemen involved in the incident, including the SHO, had been suspended and they would be investigated for Bilal’s death. The victim’s death came to the family’s notice when news channels broke the news.
“We were shocked when we watched news about the apprehension of our brother in a police shoot-out,” Bilawal said. “We approached the hospital but the police had taken him back to the police station.”
The victim’s brother accused the policemen of demanding a bribe and torturing Bilal when the family approached the police station. He alleged that his brother had died because of torture.
After Bilal’s arrest, the police had claimed that he was a street criminal and had been arrested in an injured state after an exchange of fire. The suspended policemen have claimed in their defence that the suspect died of cardiac arrest caused by low blood pressure and rejected the claims that bullet injuries resulted in his death.
The police also took the suspect to Abbasi Shaheed Hospital at least twice. According to doctors at the hospital, when the police brought the injured suspect to the hospital for the first time, they took him back after initial medical treatment; however, he was brought to the hospital again late on Friday night as his condition had worsened during his detention at the police station, and he died during treatment.
The post-mortem has been conducted and the investigators are waiting for its report to ascertain the actual cause of Bilal’s death. His funeral prayers were offered at a seminary located in Gabol Goth, after which he was laid to rest at a local graveyard.
