LAHORE: Police allegedly tortured and ‘arrested’ a news channel anchorperson for covering the protest of residents against the owner of a private housing society in Sundar area here on Thursday.

Sources say that scores of residents of the Theme Park View housing scheme had gathered with the complaints, including land grabbing and suspension of electricity supply to them by the society management despite charging the fees.

The protesters alleged that three persons have been killed over land grabbing by the housing society management. The owner of the housing society is a retired policeman.

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The sources say that a news channel anchorperson, Mian Imran Arshad, reached the site along with his team, including cameramen, to cover the protest.

Eyewitnesses say that the police deployed on the spot suddenly used force against the protesters, thrashed many of them and took some of them into custody.

They say as the anchorperson started covering the protest for his TV programme, the police personnel attacked him and his team, subjecting them to torture.

Some journalists alleged that the police misused their authority on the orders of the circle ASPs Amir Khan and Kamil Mushtaq to teach a lesson to the media persons for exposing the ‘police brutality’ against peaceful protesters.

Some video clips of the police torture also surfaced on social media, showing armed policemen thrashing a boy on the rooftop of a building for recording the torture scenes with his mobile phone. The footage also showed the policemen snatching the boy’s mobile phone and taking him into custody. Similarly, some other video clips showed the police beating the protesters with clubs.

The eyewitnesses say the police bundled the anchorperson into a van and took him to police station for further action.

The arrest of the working journalist sparked resentment among the media community which declared it a case of harassment of media persons.

Some journalists later reached the police station to extend support to Mian Imran and strongly condemned the police action.

They regretted that incidents of violence against journalists continued to rise during the tenure of the PML-N government in Punjab.

Following the incident, Lahore Operations SSP Taswar Iqbal and other senior police officers reached the police station, where they held negotiations with senior journalists present there.

The SSP told Dawn the matter has been resolved and the police have returned the cameras and other belongings of the journalists seized during the action.

To a question, he said the incident was caused because of a ‘misunderstanding’ between the police and the journalists, admitting that the way police ‘arrested’ the anchorperson was ‘not reasonable’.

Published in Dawn, June 7th, 2024