LAHORE, Aug 27: Six policemen were suspended from service on Wednesday for making attempts to mint money from an alleged hooker and a customer on Jail Road late on Tuesday night.

Police sources say it is a common practice that most of police patrol do not perform their duties and spend maximum time to look for such opportunities to make money. Some of them even patronize call girls, they say. Three or four cases mean Rs5,000 to Rs10,000 in a night for a police patrol comprising one officer and six subordinate personnel.

Two such cases had also been lodged in the late 1999 with the then Mujahid police SP, they say.

On Tuesday night, a police patrol pounced upon an alleged hooker on Jail Road moments after she was picked up by a customer. They refused to bribe the policemen and this led to an exchange of harsh words. The policemen then took the girl to a corner, leaving a colleague with the customer. Somebody suspecting the girl was being gangraped by the policemen reported the matter to an Urdu newspaper. The same message was radioed on behalf of acting Punjab IGP Saadatullah Khan when he came to know about it.

City police chief Khwaja Khalid Farooq sent Lahore Operations and Prevention police SSP Aftab Cheema to the spot to probe the incident. The SSP along with SP Rao Karim came there. By that time

the police patrol had taken the two to the Civil Lines police station.

Rao Karim, who was appointed an inquiry officer, recorded statements of both sides. The girl denied that she had been raped but she accused the policemen of keeping her in illegal custody. The customer told the officer that the policemen brought him to the police station when he refused to pay them Rs20,000 they had demanded. The policemen were identified as head constables Muhammad Azam and constables Muhammad Boota, Abdur Razzak, Zameerul Hassan, Abbas Ali and Muhammad Akram.

The SP found the policemen of guilty of misusing their powers, deviating from their assigned job and recommended strict action against them in his report submitted to the police chief.

The police chief ordered the suspension of the policemen from service and a departmental inquiry against them. A criminal case was also registered against the police officials. The inquiry officer, however, let the girl and the customer go, but a police spokesman said a case would also be registered against them.