MUZAFFARABAD, July 31: Around 200 people staged a demonstration here on Sunday for three hours to protest against alleged police torture causing the death of an ex-serviceman.

The protesters, including family members and neighbours of the 75-year-old retired hawaldar Chaudhry Rehmatullah, had also brought his body on a cot which they placed in the middle of the road and burnt tyres to press the administration for punishment of the police personnel responsible for the torture.

The police, however, denied the charge saying that the ‘chronic cardiac patient’ might have died of heart failure during a police raid conducted in his neighbourhood to arrest some other accused.

A protester told Dawn that an 11-member police party raided the Mohri Gojra locality to arrest one Sudhir.

However, the police party entered the house of Sudhir’s uncle, Rehmatullah, whose own son Sharafat Ali was recently acquitted in a murder case for want of proof. Anticipating his re-arrest, Mr Ali fled and the police beat his aged father which caused his death, the protester claimed.

City Police Station SHO Syed Waheed Gillani denied that the police party had entered Mr Rehmatullah’s house.

He said that post-mortem was conducted in the CMH and its report would be made public within two days.

The relatives of the deceased, he said, had also filed an FIR in which they had accused the police and some others, with whom they were already in a feud, of killing their kin.