KARACHI, Nov 21: Two police officials of the Crime Investigation Department have been suspended for torturing a young man during interrogation.

A senior police official told Dawn that a departmental inquiry had been initiated against ASI Aftab and Constable Sohail.

A battered and bruised young man was dumped in front of the Government College of Commerce and Economics on Dr Ziauddin Ahmad Road by a police vehicle on the night of Oct 20. A passerby asked the man his address, and immediately informed his family. The victim’s brother rushed to the spot and took his brother home.

The victim was taken to the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital for a medicolegal examination the following day after obtaining a referral letter from the Citizens-Police Liasion Committee.

“After tying my hands behind my back, they used to hang him from the ceiling for four hours. They used to torture me this way many times,” recalls Nazar Abbas, 32, who was picked up by plainclothes policemen in a Suzuki Hi-roof in Gulistan-i-Jauhar on October 13. He remained in custody for more than a week.

Following his disappearance, the victim’s family went looking for him in hospitals and at the Edhi morgue. Later they lodged an FIR of Abbas’s kidnapping at the Sharae Faisal police station.

The victim’s family learnt about his whereabouts when two other youths picked up along with the victim by the police were released after giving the police cash.

“Apart from subjecting me to torture by hanging me upside down, the police officials also struck me on the heels which are still swollen,” Abbas said.

“During the day they kept me in the Civil lines office and at night they used to shift me blind-folded to some safe house where I was tortured,” he said.

He said the policemen who interrogated and tortured him used to threaten to implicate him in the killing of five brothers in Jamshed Quarters and firing at the police van carrying Shoaib Khan.

Abbas recalled that at one stage he had even admitted to killing Maulana Azam Tariq and agreed to sign a confessional statement on the condition that the police would stop torturing him. Abbas, who previously worked in a travel agency for several years and currently deals in cars, was tracked down by his elder brother Sibte Hasan, a sub-inspector working with the investigation wing at the Gulzar-i-Hijri police station.

Hasan said that though he had used all his contacts, he had not been allowed to meet his brother who had been lodged at the Civil Lines office of the CID.

The police dumped Abbas on Dr Ziauddin Ahmad Road after torturing him for 13 days.

“Before finally dropping me on Dr Ziauddin Ahmad Road, the police drove me around for quite some time in an official vehicle while they threatened to kill me in a fake encounter,” Abbas recalled.

Hasan said he gave the CID Rs30,000 to get his brother released.

“A common man, with no connections, money and influence, would have ended up dead,” Abbas said.

According to the medicolegal report of the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital, the victim had a fracture of the right ankle, swollen shoulders and a black eye.