Four cops jailed for defective inquiry into fake encounter

The Sindh High Court (SHC) on Tuesday sentenced four policemen to six months of rigorous imprisonment after finding them guilty of conducting a defective investigation that had let to the death of a man on the eve of Eidul Azha in 2018 and another’s false imprisonment for over two years.

The punishment comes after the acquittal of a man named Arshad in a police encounter case registered at the Gulberg police station. On November 26 the SHC had acquitted the appellant of the police encounter charges and set aside his conviction awarded by the trial court. The SHC had issued show-cause notices to Sub-Inspector Ghulam Shabbir Gopang, Sub-Inspector Bagh Ali Junejo, Assistant Sub-Inspector Najaf Ali, Head Constable Rana Tariq and others.

The policemen were told to submit a response on their defective investigation in the police encounter case under the anti-terrorism law that had led to the death of a man named Syed Owais Ali Jaffery in the North Nazimabad neighbourhood on August 22, 2018.

After the perusal of the reply of the police officials, the SHC’s division bench headed by Justice Nazar Akbar said that all the factors clearly indicated that at the time of the incident, Jaffery was not committing any robbery because he was driving his brother’s motorbike carrying Rs25,000 in cash. The bench said that the prosecution had failed to produce data on the deceased from the Crime Record Office in the trial court or the high court.

The SHC said the cold-blooded murder of a man from point-blank range could not be ruled out when there was no information available to the police party about any criminal record of the deceased. The court said that both the investigating officers had confirmed that Arshad had no criminal record and the manner of arrest had been contradicted even today.

The court also said that Arshad had not only been kept in police custody during the Eid holidays in 2018 but also for the next two plus years in jail in a fabricated case. The SHC said that all the facts and evidences on record indicated that not only had a false case been registered against the two men but also no inquiry or investigation had been otherwise properly conducted to get the conviction on merit.

The bench said that the policemen had also been facing departmental disciplinary proceedings, so that would take its own course in accordance with the law.

The bench also said that the case of defective investigation against the policemen had been fully established and all the charged officials were found to be delinquent in discharging their duties. The additional prosecutor general agreed that it was a clear case of a defective investigation. The SHC sentenced Gopang, Junejo, Ali and Tariq to six months of rigorous imprisonment under Section 27 of the Anti-Terrorism Act and fined them Rs50,000.

The policemen were present in court, from where they were remanded to judicial custody to serve their sentence. The bench directed the District Central senior superintendent of police to submit a compliance report in accordance with the court’s order.