SHC suspends DSP for treating suspect as witness in missing person’s case

The Sindh High Court on Wednesday suspended a deputy superintendent of police for treating SSP Raja Umer Khattab, who has been nominated a suspect in a missing person’s case, as a witness, and directed the police high-ups to take disciplinary action against the police officer.

The directive came during a hearing of a petition against the alleged enforced disappearance of Nadeem Patel, a suspect in the Karachi airport attack case. The petitioner submitted that the family of Nadeem Patel had registered a case against SSP Khatab over his alleged disappearance, but no action had been taken by the police.

A division bench headed by Justice Nazar Akbar took exception to the performance of the investigation officer of the case, DSP Yousuf Jamal, and observed that the investigation officer repeatedly tried to deceive the court and made misstatements.

The court observed that first, the investigation officer tried to misguide it by declaring that the missing person was involved in several criminal cases and placed on record a 23-year-old FIR. It further said that the responsibility of the police was not to prove that the missing person was a hardened criminal, and even if he was notorious criminal, the duty of the police to arrest him would be even more serious.

The court observed that the DSP had earlier stated that he had written a letter to the additional inspector general of the Counter Terrorism Department to seek permission to record the statement of SSP Khattab; however, he said he had not yet received a reply to the letter. On the other hand, it said, the IO stated before the court that he had already recorded Khattab’s statement.

To a court query, the investigation officer submitted that he had recorded the statement of Khattab on September 2 under Section 161 of the CrPC; however, despite having recorded the statement he avoided to place the same on record along with his reports.

The division bench observed that investigation officer stated that Khattab was nominated accused in the case, but neither he had arrested the accused in the FIR nor the accused had obtained bail from a court of the law.

It said the failure of the DSP to arrest the nominated accused led it to believe that either the investigation officer was corrupt or incompetent or he was not willing to perform his duties in accordance with the law.

The court stated that the investigation officer had recorded the statement of the nominated accused, who had reached him at his office as a witness and his statement under Section 161 CrPC had been recorded. When the court confronted why the statement of the accused was taken as a witness, the IO conceded that he should not have recorded the statement under section 161 of CrPC.

The court observed that no one can assure the complainant that any justice could be done by the police with such kinds of investigations even after the registration of an FIR. It remarked that the IO had failed to perform his duties in accordance with the law and in particular he had not followed the standard operation procedures provided by the Sindh IGP for dealing with missing persons’ cases.

The court ordered that the DSP should immediately be suspended and disciplinary action initiated by the SSP operations or the competent authority whosoever it may be. It said that whoever would the new IO of the case, if he failed to investigate the case in accordance with the law he would also meet the same fate. It directed the provincial law officer to submit a compliance report at the next hearing.