June 01, 2008	Sunday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 26, 1429

KARACHI, May 31: A woman died on Saturday when a police team raided a house in the Pirabad police limits to arrest her son suspected to be involved in crime. Officials attributed the death to “a heart attack caused by shock”, contrary to family claims that she was manhandled by law-enforcers.

Area police said Sughra Bibi, in her late 50s, died due to shock as police raided her house late in the night to arrest her 22-year-old son, Falak Sher, who was wanted in an alleged robbery case.“Khawaja Ajmer Nagri police conducted the raid on a tip-off,” said an official at the Pirabad police station. “We just came to know about the death of the woman when area people protested against the police action.”

Meanwhile, he ruled out a scuffle between the police and the deceased woman, saying that there was no sign of such claims.

“Area people just wanted to exploit the situation,” he added. However, people alleged that the woman was pleading for leniency for her son not believing that he was involved in a robbery.

“But the policemen beat her up and left her injured,” one of her neighbours told the staff at the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital, where she was brought for treatment, though in vain.

A large number of area people later gathered outside the health facility protesting against the Khawaja Ajmer Nagri police and demanding arrest of their officer. Later, they took away Sughra’s body without autopsy.

“Area people refused to allow us to follow the procedures,” said an official at the Abbassi Shaheed Hospital, a claim was denied by neighbours of the deceased woman, who alleged that hospital staff was not interested in conducting an autopsy under the pressure of the law-enforcers.

Meanwhile, Khawaja Ajmer Nagri police denied any manhandling of Sughra Bibi while raiding her home. They said the operation took a few minutes and police did not face any resistance from the suspect’s family.

“The suspect is wanted under Section 342 of the Pakistan Penal Code,” said an official at the Khawaja Ajmer Nagri police station. “She just asked the police ‘don’t beat my son’. We believed the woman couldn’t accept such humiliation and had a heart attack.”