Family accuses police of helping rivals to murder its member

PESHAWAR: In a novel case, a family from Lakki Marwat has accused the local police of enabling its rivals to shoot dead one of its members, a source told The News.

The family claimed the police raided its house at midnight to take one of their members along with them. It maintained that its family member, Imran, was later found dead in the fields after being allegedly shot dead by the rivals.

Senior police officials, however, disputed the claim of involvement of the cops and helping the rivals to commit the murder. They said a case had been lodged against all those nominated by the family in the first information report (FIR) and it was being probed impartially and thoroughly. The family believed the police officials helped the rivals by picking up Imran from his house.

The source said that one Gul Zarmina, in her 50s, lodged an FIR at the Lakki Police Station on November 15 that a police party headed by Station House Officer of Naurang Police Station, Gul Mohammad, along with Noor Rehman and Haji Bahadur raided their house and picked up her son Imran who was asleep in his room. She stated in the FIR that the next morning she went to the police station but did not find her son in the lock-up. The woman said when she returned home she was told that the body of her son had been found in the nearby fields.

The woman said their family has an enmity with Noor Rehman and Haji Bahadur who, she alleged, killed her son with the help of the local police. The woman demanded that a case be lodged against the SHO and her family’s two rivals who were present during the raid when Imran was picked up.

The family also stage protest by placing the body of Imran on the road after which the police officials were directed to lodge the case against the SHO and the family’s rivals. The SHO has got bail before arrest from the local court. The family did not mention in the FIR as to why the cops helped the rivals and that too in uniform by conducting a raid at midnight. An official said the police were investigating the case. “The father and uncle of Imran are proclaimed offenders in a murder case.

They had killed a man from the Haji Bahadur group,” a police official told The News. He added that Imran had been recently released from jail.“It was our lawful duty to register the FIR against all the nominated persons including the SHO Naurang even though the incident occurred in the limits of the Lakki Police Station,” the official added.