LAHORE: The Anti-Corruption Establishment (ACE) on Wednesday booked four policemen and arrested one of them, for allegedly receiving a hefty amount from a mobile phone shop owner by threatening to implicate him in a drug case.

According to the ACE, shopkeeper Ghulam Rasool said in his complaint that he was returning home from his mobile phone shop when four policemen stopped him on the pretext of snap checking.

He alleged that during the search, the policemen snatched Rs50,000 he had in his pocket and asked him to pay them more money otherwise they would implicate him in a drug case. The complainant said that on being told that he had no money, the policemen took him to an ATM machine and coerced him into withdrawing Rs170,000 from his bank account.

Later, he said, the suspects got transferred another Rs75,000 from his Jazz account to their personal account.

However, he said, one of the suspects, Constable Hafiz Usman Iftikhar, kept demanding more money from him. He said the suspects then called his wife from his cell phone and asked her to bring more money to a spot near the airport. “My wife reached the place with cash and handed it over to the policemen, after which they allowed me to go,” Ghulam Rasool said.

The complainant said that the next day Constable Usman Iftikhar called him again and demanded another Rs25,000. However, this time, the shopkeeper reported the matter to the ACE.

Acting on the complaint, ACE Regional Director Khurram Pervez formed a team of officials, directing them to nab the suspect red-handed.

Accordingly, the ACE team caught ConstableHafiz Usman Iftikhar of Manga Mandi police station red-handed while receiving the amount and recovered the marked currency from him. The ACE team is conducting raids to arrest the three other policemen involved in the incident.

A case has been registered against the the suspects.

Published in Dawn, March 14th, 2024