ISLAMABAD: The capital city’s police may have committed a major blunder while marking cases to refer to the newly-constituted military courts, sources told Dawn on Thursday.

On the list of six cases, agreed upon by a top four-member committee of legal and law enforcement officials, case number six is mentioned as “State VS Sajidullah”.

In the details of the case, mentioned in the next column, the given case FIR No. is 76/13, meaning that the FIR was filed in 2013. The list states that the case was lodged under sections 324 of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC), Section 7 of the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA), sections 4 and 5 of the Explosives Act and Section 15 of the Protection of Pakistan Ordinance, (POPO) 2013 at the Koral Police Station in Islamabad.

A description of the case, provided in brackets, states that the case involves “Assault at police by terrorists of TTP case (sic)”.

However, police records available with Dawn, show that no case with the mentioned particulars was filed at Koral police station. In fact, FIR No 76, registered at Koral in 2013, concerns a stolen theft and has nothing to do with any terrorism or an assault on police officials. FIR No 76 is, in fact, registered under Section 381-A of the PPC against unidentified persons in response to a complaint lodged by Abdul Samad Abid.

The FIR states that unidentified individuals stole a Corolla XLI vehicle worth Rs1.2million from outside the complainant’s house in Ghori Town.

Typographical error?

Officials told Dawn on condition of anonymity that the particular case mentioned in the list sent to the committee for referral to military courts did not match with the FIR number given.

They admitted that it appeared to be a typographical error, as the case whose particulars are provided next to the obviously faulty FIR number was registered in the year 2014. The details provided in the list against No 76/13 actually correspond with FIR No 76/14, which was also registered at the Koral police station.

This case was registered on Feb 28, last year when police arrested seven suspects and seized grenades, explosives and weapons from their possession during a search operation in the Sodhran area of Koral. The action was conducted in response to a tip-off about the presence of suspected terrorists in the area, who were alleged planning to target a sensitive installation.

During the operation, police carried out a door-to-door search, and when they finally managed to corner the men, they had to face retaliation.

The raiding party became involved in a firefight with the suspects, but managed to apprehend them as they tried to escape.

Despite repeated attempts, Islamabad Inspector General Tahir Alam Khan was not available for comment

However, a senior police officer told Dawn that the error had been detected and would be rectified soon.

Published in Dawn, January 16th, 2015

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