LAHORE, June 6: Police have set free the owner of an alleged gambling den and 13 other people, besides returning them stake money and a large number of weapons ‘on the pressure of high-ups’, it is learnt. Police sources told Dawn that the incident took place on Saturday night when a large police contingent, led by DSP Qasim Khan, raided the den in Garden Town. The den is owned by Shahid Khan, who is said to have good connections with police high-ups and politicians, the source added, quoting two reports (48 and 50) penned down in the record of Garden Town police after the accused were set free without meeting any legal requirements.

“I have asked Lahore Operations SSP Aftab Cheema to inquire into the matter and report to me,” city police chief DIG Tariq Saleem said when contacted by phone.

Despite resistance, the reports say, the police teams had seized stake money worth hundreds of thousands of rupees, weapons and rounded up 13 people.

Soon the arrested men were driven to police station, the DSP and the Garden Town police SHO began getting phone calls from their high-ups, the reports said. Initially, the two officials refused to let the accused go, but, later, they had to release them when the higher authorities asked the SHO to leave the police station and consider himself suspended from service if he failed to “obey the orders.”

The report No. 50 says that the accused when set free came to their den and resorted to aerial firing for over one hour to celebrate their win. “We had recovered 250 bullets, besides other weapons from the place. One can imagine how many bullets the accused would have used in the one-hour celebration,” a raiding team member said.

The officer alleged that eight cases of various kinds had already been registered against the owner of the den with Mughalpura police and six more such cases with Garden Town police.

He said the operations of the den and visits of some notorious criminals there had been brought to the notice of the high-ups several times during the last four months, but to no avail.

“Instead the police were always asked to keep their eyes closed.”

The incident has surfaced hardly some weeks after a former anti-terrorism court judge and his men were released in a similar fashion on the pressure of high-ups and some political friends. The incident had taken place in Chuhng police limits.