LAHORE, Nov 24: The Lahore High Court has taken exception to police excesses against the public, and showed displeasure over the way the City Kotwali police have stepped beyond its authority.

This observation came on Monday when three people, who were among the seven illegally detained and recovered by a court bailiff last week through a habeas corpus petition, were produced before the court by the SSP (operations).

The court allowed the detainees to move against the order of the bail before arrest passed in favour of three policemen after they were booked on charges of illegal detention, torture and re-arresting them from the LHC.

According to the habeas corpus petition, seven people, three of them women, were arrested by the City Kotwali police last week without registration of cases against them. The detainees moved the superior court in a habeas corpus petition through Advocate Jameel Akhtar and the court appointed a bailiff, which recovered them from the police custody.

They were produced before the court which set them free, as the police could not show the registration of any case against them. However, they were re-arrested when they were coming out of the court room, and jailed at the Kotwali lock-up.

The detainees moved another habeas corpus petition after which the court summoned the SSP (operations), Lahore, who was directed to produce them. He was also ordered that a criminal case against the police officials, who had re-arrested the people freed by the court, be registered with a report to the court.

When the SSP again appeared before the court on Monday, he produced three of the detainees and stated that the remaining people, including two women, were facing charges in 15 criminal cases and had been remanded in the judicial custody after the registration of an FIR against them.

As for the three policemen, who were found responsible for the re-arrest, the SSP submitted that a case had been registered against them under the court’s direction and they were set free by the sessions court upon presenting petitions for bail before arrest.

The LHC took serious notice of the issue and observed that it was deplorable that while the police resorted to highhandedness against citizens and arrested them even without registration of any case, their treatment to their own people was entirely different and this spoke high of how they stepped beyond the domain of law. —Correspondent