Police taking hasty action on girl’s murder to please court

Saturday, 23 February 2013

HOMER BALOCH

ISLAMABAD: Is it the fear of the Supreme Court or the typical police-way of wrapping up a murder case is not sure but capital police have rounded up a university student for murdering a 10-year-old-girl of Bhara Kahu who went missing on February 13 and three days later her charcoaled body was found from near Sector I-9.

Bhara Kahu Police officials confirmed the arrest of 23-year-old Ibrar, a university colleague of Ms Mehek, one of three family members (including father and brother) accused of killing their house maid's 10-year daughter, from his Rawalpindi house on Friday. “We have got four days remand of Ibrar today (Saturday) from Session Judge Ayesha Shabbir and the accused has confessed about raping and killing the minor diseased in initial investigation, and further details are likely to come from him during further interrogations,” Sub Inspector Maqsood confirmed.

Some police officials, seeking anonymity, confirmed that Mehek, who is currently on pre-arrest bail, was summoned to the police station for interrogations where despite torture and harassment she did not make a statement yet regarding any involvement of her or Ibrar in the murder. According to sources, although she knows Ibrar for some time as they both were students of the same university and in contact with each other but she has not met him in the last month.

Advocate Ch Muzammil Din Gujjar, the lawyer of the accused family while talking to The Spokesman stated that Mehek was kept in police station during night for more than 12 hours but still she had not stated what the police officials were forcing her to say. “There isn’t any hard and fast rule for keeping the accused into custody while investigating for a given time, but still the law states that the duration of the custody should be reasonable,” he said.

He further said that his clients were fully cooperating with the police officials and their innocence can be evaluated by knowing that the father and brother of the accused girl themselves went to the police station for the investigation where they were arrested and now they were being tortured by the police after getting their remand. Police sources have confirmed that the police officials are taking action in haste just to please the Supreme Court which has taken suo-motu notice of the issue.

It has also been learnt that a high official of the police department, living in the neighbourhood of the accused family, and knowing them for the past many years was taking interest to assist the accused family but was asked to back-off after receiving a phone call from the IGP Islamabad who allegedly prevented him from interfering.

A neighbour of Mehek, requesting anonymity, told The Spokesman that police was totally relying on the statement of the younger brother who is four or five years old. “In his first statement, the child who lives in front of the accused home has said that he saw her sister in Mehek’s home from balcony. But later when again the child was asked the same question by other people, he said he had not seen her,” he said.