April 28, 2007	Saturday	Rabi-us-Sani 10, 1428

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RAWALPINDI, April 27: A local court has ordered a police inquiry into the New Town police’s denial that it kept a young college student in illegal confinement.

District and Sessions Judge Khawaja Imtiaz Ahmed has asked the City Police Officer Syed Moravat Ali Shah to appoint a DSP rank officer who should not be of the New Town circle to investigate the case of 22-year-old Waqas Ali after his father disowned a written statement presented by the New Town police in his name implying that Waqas was not in police custody but had gone unannounced to Abbottabad.

Jahangir Akhtar, the father of the student, said the statement was “bogus”.

He told Dawn on Friday that a sub-inspector of police had pressured him to give such a statement but he did not succumb.

However, the New Town police set his son free on April 19 after holding him incognito for 15 days and defying a bailiff sent by the court to locate him.

Waqas Ali was picked up by four policemen in plainclothes on April 3 when he along with his brother Faisal Ali were returning home in their car (RIA-1932) and took them to the New Town police station.

Faisal Ali was released after midnight but Waqas Ali was kept by the police who reportedly subjected him to torture.

After failing to get his son Waqas released from the police custody, his father moved the court of district and session judge who appointed Mirza Afzal Baig as a bailiff to recover the boy.

Jahangir said, a few moments before the bailiff’s raid, his son was removed from the police station and shifted to some undisclosed place and continued denying that Waqas was in their custody.

The bailiff went through the Roznamcha of the police station but did not find any entry about the boy in the record book. He surprisingly found his car parked in the police station. To justify the presence of the car inside the police station the SHO presented a report to the bailiff that it was found abandoned in Sadiqabad area during night patrolling.

“Even several days after the release, my son Waqas is still terrified and in distress. He had marks of torture around his neck and cigarette burns on his body,” Jahangir said.

It was the second case of illegal detention and human rights abuse by the Pindi police in the current month.