PESHAWAR: A local court has granted bail to two police constables arrested on the charges of stripping and torturing an Afghan national in custody.

Additional district and sessions judge Shahid Mahmood Khattak accepted the bail petitions of Zahoor Khan and Bilal after hearing the arguments of their counsel and the prosecution.

The FIR of the incident was registered at the Tehkal police station on June 24, 2020, after two video clips of the torture and stripping of Radiullah alias Amir by the police went viral on social media causing a public outcry.

Initially, the police arrested constables Zairullah, Naeem and Tauseef but later, the then SHOs, Imranuddin of the Yakatoth police station and Sheharyar of the Tehkal police station, were also taken into custody.

There followed the arrest of the petitioners, who were gunmen with SHO Imranuddin.

The Afghan national was picked up allegedly by a police party after a video surfaced showing him use abusive language against police officials. The policemen late took him into custody before severely torturing and stripping him.

Danyal Asad Chamkani, lawyer for the petitioners, insisted that his clients were falsely implicated in the case and that they had nothing to do with it. He said the prime accused policemen in the case had already obtained bail from the Supreme Court.

The lawyer said a judicial inquiry into the custodial torture was conducted by Justice Lal Jan Khattak of the Peshawar High Court, while Radiullah didn’t charge his clients with committing the crime in question.

Advocate Danyal contended that it was correct that his clients were gunmen with SHO Imranuddin but they didn’t support him in the alleged crime.

He contended that the torture and stripping video clips were not recorded on the mobile phones of his clients and that was verified by the forensic report of videos.

Initially, the provisions of the Pakistan Electronic Crimes Act (PECA) were not included in the FIR. Later, the district public prosecutor had intervened and got different provisions added to the FIR, including PECA Section 20 (offence against dignity of a person), Section 21 (offence against modesty of a person) and Section 24 (cyber stalking) and Pakistan Penal Code sections 166 (public servant disobeying law to cause injury to a person) and 342 (wrongful confinement).

In Sept last year, the Peshawar High Court had turned down the bail pleas of the five prime accused. However, they later secured bail from the Supreme Court.

Published in Dawn, March 10th, 2021