LAHORE - A 50-year-old man died on Friday in the lock-up of Muslim Town police station, hours after he was arrested from his Gulshan-i-Ravi residence during a raid.
Police officials claimed that Muhammad Ashraf was rushed to a hospital after he suffered cardiac arrest where he was pronounced as ‘brought dead’. The body was moved to morgue for autopsy.
Family of the deceased told reporters at the Jinnah hospital morgue that Rana was thrashed and dragged by policemen outside his house before being shifted to the police station despite the fact that he was a heart patient.
Sources added that the father of three had been declared as a Proclaimed Offender by the Muslim Town police several months ago. A cheque bounce case (under section 489-F of the PPC) was registered against him on the complaint of Zafar Iqbal. A police investigator claimed that the deceased was a defaulter since he had issued a bank cheque of Rs50,000 to the complainant. Lahore CCPO Amin Wains has taken notice of the ‘death in custody’ and has ordered the DIG (Operations) to initiate an inquiry into the incident and submit the report within 24 hours.
A team of Muslim Town police raided the house of Rana Ashraf on early Friday. While he was being brought to the police station he complained of severe pain in his chest. “The cops did not take his words seriously considering that he was trying to befool them. They started laughing at him. Then he fell on the ground and fell unconscious,” a police source told this reporter requesting anonymity. The cops contacted the Punjab Emergency Service (Rescue-1122) to shift the man to a hospital. After a considerable time, the heart patient was shifted to the Jinnah Hospital, where he was pronounced as brought dead. Further investigations are underway.
A close relative of the deceased said that the police investigators deliberately declared the accused person as a proclaimed offender in the record even without notifying him. Before Friday, the police never raided his house.
Sources in the investigation say the investigators prefer to declare an accused person as a proclaimed offender instead of arresting him. “This has become a common practice in the cases registered with the police under section 406, 506, 489-F, and 365. The investigating officers declare accused persons as POs to make the case more complicated for them,” sources added.
Deaths of accused in police custody are common in Punjab, tagged as a police state by many politicians. In their campaign manifesto, the PML-N had pledged the much-needed police reforms but that was not more than an election slogan as the political leadership has poorly failed to bring any positive change in the provincial policing - dubbed as Thana culture.
In July, Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif had taken notice of the death of a youth owing to police torture at Thikriwala police station in Faisalabad district. Sabzazar police had tortured a man to death and buried his body in the local graveyard to cover up the killing, in May.
In April, five cops of Harbanspura police allegedly killed a 30-year-old man after kidnapping him and subjecting him to severe torture in Lahore. His body was recovered from the canal in the Mughalpura police limits. In May 2012, hundreds of local residents staged a strong protest demonstration at Ferozepur Road after a 30-year-old motor mechanic succumbed to police torture at a private detention centre.
A team of Batapur police had arrested Irfan Ahmed, a resident of Makkah Colony, and he was being grilled in connection with a vehicle-theft case when he expired. The police had kept him in custody illegally at a private torture cell for several days. Later, an inquiry report revealed that the policemen applied third-degree torture methods during interrogation.