KARACHI: The Frere police on Sunday registered a murder case against a detained CTD policeman and a mobile shop owner for ‘lynching’ a 50-year-old labourer at the Cantonment Railway Station in the early hours of Saturday morning over a ‘mobile phone theft’ allegation, said City SSP Dr Samiullah Soomro, who is also in-charge SSP-South.

The victim’s family also levelled allegations of ‘criminal negligence’ against two policemen of the Frere police station, who allegedly instead of taking critically injured labourer Ghulam Sarwar to the hospital took him to the police station where they allegedly demanded a bribe from the family for releasing him, added the senior officer.

The police have registered an FIR (166/2018) under Sections 302 (premeditated murder) and 34 (common intention) of the Pakistan Penal Code on the complaint of the victim’s wife, Mumtaz Bibi, against detained CTD policeman Uzair Khan and shopkeeper Rana Muhammad Aslam.

According to contents of the FIR, Mumtaz Bibi received a call from her husband’s mobile phone at 4.30am on Saturday to bring a cellphone, which her husband had mistakenly taken home from a public mobile phone charging facility at the Cantonment Station.

Later she received another call to come to the Frere police station. She came to the police station and handed over the phone to the police and asked the police to let her meet her husband, but the police asked her to come later.

The complainant said that she learnt that her husband had gone to the Cantonment Station at 3am on Saturday where shopkeeper Rana Mohammed Aslam and CTD constable Uzair and others caught hold of him and subjected him to beating for ‘stealing’ the mobile phone.

They handed over her husband to the police in an injured condition, who succumbed to his wounds.

Apart from registering the murder case against the said suspects, the complainant demanded action against the two policemen of the Frere police station, Sameer and Ahmed, who allegedly demanded Rs50,000 as a bribe for releasing her husband and ‘misbehaved’ with her.

Published in Dawn, October 15th, 2018