FAISALABAD: The documents of a case registered against Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz MPA Rana Shoaib Idrees and others on the allegation of torturing a constable at the Khurrianwala police station have allegedly gone missing.

On the complaint of Khurrianwala SHO Khalid Pervaiz, the police have registered a case under Section 155-c of the Police Order and Section 409 of PPC against an ASI and a head-constable. Both the officials were later taken into custody.

The case file is about torture of police constable Zafar Iqbal.

Also read: Wanted MPA ‘involved in extortion’ as well

On Jan 28, 2013, the MPA and his henchmen stormed the police station and dragged Zafar out and tortured him. A case (65/13) was registered under sections 148, 149, 186, 225, 353, 452 and 506 of PPC.

Sub-inspector Touheed Akhtar conducted investigation of the case during the course of which the MPA placated the constable and made him submit an affidavit that he had reconciled with the legislator.

Subsequently, the then SHO, Muhammad Afzal, prepared a case cancellation report on March 20 and sent it to the prosecution branch through Touheed Akhtar on April 30. The branch returned the report with objections to it.

ASI Umar Daraz and former moharrar Ansar allegedly stole the report as it was neither available in court nor in the police station.

Another case of torturing policemen and ransacking the Khurrianwala police station was registered against the MPA on July 19 under sections 7-ATA, 148, 149, 186, 224, 225, 440 and 553 of PPC. The MPA secured pre-arrest bail from the Lahore High Court till Aug 11.

An MPA told Dawn that the police were trying their best to detain Rana Shoaib and a concocted story of misplaced documents had been aired to achieve the objective.He said the FIR mentioned that the file had been stolen on Nov 18, however, cases were instituted after nine months. “It is strange the police officials learnt about it after months,” he said.

The police would now aggressively pursue the case of torture of constable Zafar as Rana Shoaib succeeded in securing pre-arrest bail in the other case. He said a number of parliamentarians of Faisalabad had requested Punjab Governor Muhammad Sarwar to order a judicial probe into the issue.

City Police Officer Sohail Habib Tajik told Dawn that a team of best police officers headed by SSP (investigation) Bilal Umar had been selected to investigate the issue.

Rana Shoaib denies torturing Zafar and alleges that he brought Zafar to the room of Moharrar when he opened fire on people in Khurrianwala. He says both the cases against him are politically motivated as “his rivals in the PML-Q are conspiring against him.”

“The police have a plan to kill me in a staged encounter and they will get away with it after concocting a story of murder,” he expresses fear.

A police official, who spoke to this correspondent on the condition of anonymity, said officials were preparing the record of the MPA to be produced in the Lahore High Court on Aug 11 as they learnt that the case cancellation report (yet to be confirmed by the DSP) had gone missing.

He said it transpired during investigation that the report had been stolen to favour the MPA. He said reconciliation between Zafar and the accused had been rejected by the Khurrianwala DSP on technical grounds.

Published in Dawn, Aug 3rd, 2014