MANDI BAHAUDDIN, July 17: A madressah teacher facing charges of torturing his student to death was remanded in police custody. According to Jamia Haideria Barkatul Quran (Gorra Hashim village) students, accused Qari Maqsood beat Mazhar Iqbal, of Sialkot, and two other students when they refused to sleep with him. Later, Iqbal died from severe injuries.

Sadar police arrested the cleric and his accomplice Muhammad Khalil for the murder.

Accused Maqsood had been teaching religious education to students for the last three years.

On July 10, accused Maqsood informed the family of Mazhar Iqbal in

Addalatgarh, Sialkot, that Mazhar had died of cholera. Muhammad Iqbal, the father of the deceased, received the body from his teacher. When the family bathed the body before burial, they found marks of torture on his body while the coffin had blood stains. They lodged a complaint of murder with Sadar police station.

Syed Aun Muhammad

Shah, Sadar deputy superintendent of police, told Dawn that

Maqsood had tortured Mazhar, Dilawar and Ali. He said Mazhar died from severe beating.

He said Dilawar and Ali, also from Sialkot, ran away from the madressah and reached their houses in Sialkot. Dilawar told his family that Mazhar had been killed by the cleric.

He said the autopsy of Mazhar revealed that his lungs and kidneys had failed; his body carried marks of torture; his backbone was fractured; and he died because of spanking with a wooden rod on his chest which left a hole there.

He said the cleric had confessed to killing the student.

He said according to cleric’s accomplice Muhammad Khalil, the accused asked him to chase the three students who had run away from the school.

The DSP said Dilawar told police accused Maqsood had sodomised him and other students and beat those who refused to sleep with him.

He said even though the plaintiff had not mention that his son had been sodomised by the cleric, police believed so and would try to establish the evidence through the medical report of Dilawar.