MULTAN, July 20: The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan has observed in a report that the recent reforms in the police service have failed to bring an end to the hostilities of policemen against the common man.

The report is prepared by the commission's task force in Multan. The task force covers the areas that previously fell under the jurisdiction of former civil divisions of Multan, Bahawalpur and Dera Ghazi Khan. It has gleaned information from newspaper reports about the police atrocities in the first half of the current year.

According to the report, as many as 221 incidents of police atrocities were reported in the media during the period. These included illegal confinement, torture, deaths in custody, killings in fake encounters, and rape.

Some 128 men and 20 women were reported to be illegally detained by the police for a period from 24 hours to as long as two months. About 191 men and 79 women fell victim to the police torture. The physical torture caused abortion to two of the victims. Similarly, four children were also reported to be tortured by men in uniform.

Around 15 people died in police custody at various police stations of the area during the first half of the ongoing calendar year. Some 25 people, including two minors, lost their lives while six policemen, an inspector among them, also died in what the police claimed encounters with outlaws.

The HRCP report observes that there is no effective system in place to check veracity of the police claims about an encounter. As a result, no action can be taken against the culprits.

Although, judicial inquiries were carried out against all of the 13 encounters that had taken place so far this year, the judiciary declared the police on the right path in all the incidents.

However, the report comments, doubts arose about the judicial probe into the police encounters when a court in Kot Addu tehsil of Muzaffargarh handed down death sentence on two counts to a police inspector for killing two persons in a fake encounter at Mahmoodkot area.

The convict, Inspector Azmatullah Gurmani, while working as the Mahmoodkot police SHO had killed two youth, Shahid Chandia and Muhammad Akram, reportedly over enmity, and later covered up the issue by labelling it as an encounter.

A civil judge conducted a judicial inquiry into the matter while SSP (inquiries) at the police headquarters in Lahore Dr Arif Mushtaq carried out the task of departmental probe. Ironically, both the inquiries declared that inspector Gurmani took the action in self-defence.

However, deceased Akram's father Manzoor Husain moved the sessions court that found the policemen guilty. Besides inspector Gurmani, the court awarded life imprisonment to two constables, who reportedly were with him during the staged encounter.

The report says women remained victims of police excesses as they ever had been. About 10 women were reportedly raped by the men in police uniform during the period. The most notorious of them all was the gang-rape of two street singers at New Multan area.

The victims 'S' and 'T' were returning home after performing at a marriage party when they were abducted and criminally assaulted. Later, they alleged that they were kidnapped in a police van and four of the perpetrators were in police uniform.

The victims stuck to their guns at all the forums, but the police remained unmoved. Later, a judicial inquiry also acquitted the policemen of having any involvement in the matter.

The Police Order 2002, the report observes, has failed to lessen a sense of insecurity among people. The Public Safety Commission has also proved too weak to check police atrocities.

The report also points out pathetic state of affairs in jails that resulted in the killing of five inmates due to torture and of six due to insufficient medical cover during the period.