SIALKOT: A labourer and his wife were tortured publicly and dragged in streets by some masked men in Mitraanwali village in Daska tehsil the other day.

Reports said the unidentified men, armed with weapons, barged into the house of Muhammad Sarwar and started beating him and his wife, Sumera Bibi, with hockey sticks.

The faces of the couple were smeared with black polish and they were forced to parade in the village streets. No one dared to save the victim couple from the clutches of the armed men.

Later, the armed men kept the couple tied with an electricity pole for some hours. Although some people captured the nasty incident in their cameras, no-one picked up the courage to get them released.

Some villagers said the police reached there a few hours after the shameful incident and took the couple with them.

Police said Sarwar’s brother-in-law Nawazish had kidnapped Shahzad Ahmad’s young daughter Aysha from the village a few days back. They said the family of the kidnapped girl had taken a revenge.

Daska-based MNA Sahibzada Syed Iftikharul Hasan Shah told reporters a political row was behind the nasty incident.

He said councillor Faiz Cheema had punished the couple for not giving him vote in the local body elections on Dec 5.

Talking to reporters, councillor Faiz Cheema termed baseless all the allegations levelled against him by his political opponents.

District Police Officer Rai Ejaz Ahmad told Dawn by phone that the Bambaanwala police had registered a case against seven accused -- Goggi Cheema, Aslam Cheema, Awais Riasat, Shabbir alias Kalu, Hero Rasheed, Basharat and Ajju -- under sections 147, 149, 342, 354, 355 and 506 of the PPC on the report of victim Sarwar.

He said the victim couple was under the police custody at a safe place.

The DPO said the main cause behind the inhuman incident was the kidnapping of a girl.

The DPO said the police arrested five of the seven nominated accused and added the section 7 ATA in the FIR already registered against them.

Published in Dawn, December 10th, 2015