HYDERABAD, June 1: Father of the girl whose suicide triggered violent street protests in unit No11 of Latifabad late last night, culminating in attack on police station and torching of a number of vehicles, has distanced himself from the agitators and accused them of having hijacked his daughter’s funeral.
Akbar Khan told Dawn on Friday that Latifabad police were cooperating with him but the miscreants hijacked the funeral of his teenaged daughter Saba because they wanted to settle personal scores with police.
He was in the process of having the FIR lodged at the police station when the miscreants started hooliganism unnecessarily, he said.
Latifabad police lobbed teargas shells and fired in the air to disperse the mob which had attacked A-Section police station on Friday night following Saba’s suicide.
She had reportedly taken the extreme step out of depression as she probably felt she had shamed her family after Mirpurkhas police picked her up on charges of being involved in kidnapping of her friend, Aroosa, on May 29. She was released the next day by court orders.
The agitators turned more violent after a cell phone message made rounds that Saba had killed herself out of shame because police had subjected her to sexual assault during arrest.
Case history Saba, a student of class-XII, was Aroosa’s friend when her family used to live in Mirpurkhas from where it moved to Latifabad five years ago.
“Aroosa had not come to us, she had gone to her friend’s house on May 19 but her family suspected us of hiding her. They came straight to my house and harassed us, which distressed my daughter,” said Akbar who worked in a private security company.
Finally on May 29, the family came along with police, took her daughter with them to Mirpurkhas and robbed them of Rs8,000 and a mobile phone, he said.
He brought her back on May 30 after Aroosa appeared in court and recorded her statement under section 164 Cr.PC but these events had left her shaken and jolted, he said.
Aroosa’s brother Ejaz had lodged a case at Mehmoodabad police station in Mirpurkhas accusing Saba and one Shahzaib Butt of kidnapping her in a car on May 19.
Ejaz said that his family was forced to lodge the FIR as Akbar and his daughter were not telling them anything about Aroosa. Actually, he said, his sister was interested in Shahzaib Butt while her father wanted to marry her to his nephew, Shahzaib Mughal.
No FIR has so far been lodged by Akbar against Mirpurkhas police while SHO Rao Nazim said that a case would be lodged against the mob which attacked the police station. He dismissed cell phone messages about reasons that led to Saba’s suicide and said the initial findings disproved the claims.
Aroosa was recovered from the house of another friend in unit-5 of Latifabad after Saba disclosed her whereabouts to Mirpurkhas police.
SHO of Mehmoodabad police station, Zulfikar Mari, said: “Saba confessed in her statement recorded under Section 161 Cr.PC before police that she had made a grave mistake in Aroosa’s case. She said she had left her at the house of her friend in Unit-5 of Latifabad”.
Latifabad A-Section police have registered an FIR lodged by Akbar Khan against Zulfikar Mari, SHO of Mehmoodabad police station, ASI Rafiq Babbar and Aroosa’s father, brother and uncle, Abdul Rasheed, Ejaz and Yunus, respectively.
