July 30, 2002	Tuesday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 19,1423

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MUZAFFARABAD, July 29: New Civil Secretariat police trespassed on the house of a High Court employee in the wee hours on Monday, severely beaten him and his four sons, one of them a serviceman, and injured them.

They accused Khurshid Anwar, driver of the HC chief justice, of being involved in a robbery case.

Mr Anwar told Dawn that six police personnel had illegally entered his house in the Upper Chattar locality at about 4am without any search warrants and severely thrashed them.

Assembled in the HC building, the driver and his two sons — Ajmal and Adil, a soldier — showed this scribe the baton marks on their backs. His another son, Akmal, 22, whose face and clothes were soaking with blood, had received dagger wounds in his head.

“The policemen hit me in the head with an axe they picked up from our house, and later dragged me out and threw in an adjacent graveyard,” Akmal alleged.

Mr Anwar said the police had taken him and his youngest son Amir to the police station and detained them. “I have come out after my bail application was accepted by the High Court, but my son is still in the lockup,” he said.

The soldier said that some policemen had come to their house again, and washed blood stains off the floor. He said the police had also snatched his service card.

A relative of Anwar said the police had gone beyond all limits, and their high-handedness was unparalleled.

New Secretariat Police Station SHO Shabbir Chohan, when contacted, said Anwar had attacked the police party with weapons. The party had been dispatched to arrest Akmal, a culprit involved in several robbery cases, he added.

He said cases had been registered against the accused for attempting murder and attacking the government servants.

When asked if any policeman was also injured in the attack, he replied that some of them had received bruises.