ISLAMABAD: A complainant has withdrawn a petition filed against ‘highhandedness’ of Islamabad police officials who raided her house at mid-night without warrants and lady constables.

IHC Chief Justice on April 16 directed the inspector general of Islamabad police to conduct an inquiry against the officials who violated the sanctity of home, trespassed on a house at mid-night and detained housewife and her five daughters for a couple of hours.

IHC Chief Justice Athar Minallah also sought report in a fortnight from the inspector general of police, deputy commissioner and the station house officer of the police station Koral on a petition of a Noshaba Usman as she accused that unidentified uniformed and plain-clothed officials barged into her house located in Bahria Town at mid-night without warrants and with no lady police officials with them.

However, the police did not submit any report regarding any inquiry into this matter so far even after the expiry of the deadline set by the IHC.

The Koral Police, however, arrested her husband Chaudhry Usman – a real estate businessman – from the Islamabad Expressway on April 21 while he was returning home after attending proceeding of a civil court in a cheque dishonor case on the complaint of Chaudhry Sudheer, who is also facing a criminal case in the same police station.

After the registration of FIR against Usman, Sudheer got some relief from police as the former did not oppose petition seeking to quash the case registered against Sudheer under various sections of Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) for displaying of deadly arms, hurling life threats and unlawful assembly.

IHC Justice Ghulam Azam Qambrani heard the petition of Sudheer. Interestingly, the police prosecutor did not oppose the quashment and Justice Qambrani has reserved decision on the petition.

It may be a coincidence that the spouse of detained businessman sought withdrawal of her petition giving signals that issue of her husband Usman’s arrest may be settled out of court.

Her counsel while appearing before the IHC Chief Justice Athar Minallah stated that the “grievances of the petitioner have been resolved” and she wanted to withdraw the petition.

According to her petition, at 2:30am of April 6 the police team led by the SHO Koral barged into petitioner’s house where she was living along with her five daughters including a six-month old baby-girl.

“The intruders were not accompanied by women police officials. The petitioner and her children were kept under illegal confinement for considerable period of time,” the petition said.

It stated that the SHO of the Koral police station kept harassing her husband every now and then adding that the complaint against the highhandedness of the police officials have been filed before the inspector general and deputy commissioner Islamabad but to no avail.

Published in Dawn, May 6th, 2021