GUJRAT: A police officer axed to death on Thursday a man who was in a lock-up, claiming that he had been angered by blasphemous remarks made by the man about companions of the Holy Prophet (PBUH).

But Gujrat District Police Officer Rai Ijaz Ahmed told Dawn that the detained man, Syed Tufail Haider, was killed because he had hurled abuses at the police officer, Faraz Naveed. The DPO said that Haider, who was from village Hassoana in the Jhang district, had been arrested by the Civil Lines police in Gujrat after a scuffle with some people on Wednesday evening. Kept in a cell in the police station, the 50-year-old man started shouting at Naveed, assistant sub-inspector (ASI), and making insulting remarks.

The ASI took the man out of the cell and moved him to another room at the police station. Here again Haider used foul language which infuriated the ASI, who picked up an axe lying in the room and hit the man at the neck. It was later said that Naveed had kept the axe at the police station for shaping ‘miswak’ (tooth cleaning twig).

A first information report was registered and the DPO said the axe and blood-stained clothes of Naveed had been seized as evidence. The DPO said Haider was a mentally disturbed man who had been seen wandering in the streets of Gujrat for a few days.

According to a police source, Haider had been turned away by his relatives whom he had come from Jhang to meet. He was picked up by police several times from different areas of the town, but each time he was allowed to go when officers adjudged him to be a mentally unstable man.

Sources in the police department quoted Naveed as saying that he had been provoked by the blasphemous remarks allegedly made by Haider. They said that immediately after the incident all the policemen at the station left the place and no-one among them took the man to a hospital. The body was later taken to Aziz Bhatti Shaheed Hospital for autopsy.

Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif ordered the Gujrat DPO to carry out a thorough investigation.

The DPO has suspended the station house officer (SHO) of the Civil Lines police station, Inspector Malik Aamir and head constable Maqsood, along with the murder accused, ASI Faraz Naveed.

The case against ASI Faraz Naveed has been registered under sections 302 and 155C of the Pakistan Penal Code on the report of Syed Kausar Ali, a brother of the deceased. Haider is survived by a widow, three sons and a daughter.

The accused ASI recently did his master’s in Islamiat.

The killing was reminiscent of an incident in Gujrat outskirts some six years ago when a blasphemy accused was gunned down by a constable guarding a police lock-up in the Kharian Cantonment police station. Later, the heirs of the murdered man pardoned the accused, who went on to become a ‘religious’ figure with the title of ‘ghazi’.

Published in Dawn, November 7th, 2014