ATA section likely to be included in case of boy’s lynching

The case of 17-year-old Rehan, who was beaten to death on Saturday for allegedly trying to rob a house in the posh locality of Bahadurabad, has taken a new turn as the police have decided to add the Section 7 of the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) in the already registered FIR on demand of the teenager’s family.

Rehan was accused of stealing valuables from a bungalow in the Bahadurabad area after which he was beaten to death by the house owner, Daniyal, his friend Zubair and others. The bungalow owner claimed that after stealing valuables from the house, Rehan threw them from the roof terrace to his two accomplices.

Videos of the beating went viral on social media in which the boy is seen having his hands tied up and being violently beaten up by the mob. One of the videos showed Rehan tied to a metallic grill and being questioned by the owner and others. The boy can also be heard naming his accomplices in the video, which was recorded by the owner and area residents.

The funeral prayers for Rehan were offered near his residence in Khudadad Colony which were attended by a large number of family members, relatives, neighbours and friends. A heavy contingent of law enforcers had been deployed in the surroundings to avoid any untoward incident on the occasion. The victim, who was the third among six siblings, was later laid to rest at a graveyard in the Drigh Road area.

Earlier, his family staged a protest sit-in on Shahrah-e-Quaideen along with the body and shouted slogans against the incident.

The protesters demanded that take strict action be taken against the arrested suspects. They further demanded that the police include the Section 302 [murder] of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) and the Section 7 of the ATA in the FIR.

“My son was painfully murdered,” said Rehan’s father Zaheer Abul Hassan. “If he had done wrong, he should have been handed over to the police or Rangers.” The ill-fated father said it could be seen in the videos that the bungalow owner and others were beating his son brutally who was begging them to call his family but they did not call anyone and continued to beat him up for at least two hours.

Hassan claimed that his son had slaughtered animals in the area on Eidul Azha and had gone to the bungalow to collect money where the house owner and others accused him of being a thief and killed him.

A post-mortem has been conducted at the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre. According to the initial post-mortem report, the body bore several marks of torture, and a head injury had caused Rehan’s death.

Initially, the police registered an FIR No 240/19 under the Section 316 of the PPC on Saturday against Daniyal and Zubair on the complaint of the father. The police are now likely to add the Section 7 of the ATA in the FIR already registered against the suspects. “We have recorded an additional statement of the boy’s father to add the Section 7 of the ATA in the FIR,” said Ferozabad SHO Aurangzeb Khattak.

“We will go to the anti-terrorism court on Monday [today] and will add the Section 7 of the ATA if court approves,” the SHO said. Quoting the initial investigations, the officer said the police had so far not found anything that validated the owner’s stance as no valuable item had been missing from the bungalow.

He, however, added that the police were trying to verifying the claims of the owner and the family as two cases pertaining to robbery and drugs had been registered against the deceased in the past at the Bahadurabad police station.