ISLAMABAD, March 28: One of the prime accused in manhandling of Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry on Wednesday distanced himself from the episode and instead passed the blame on “strangers in police uniform” for mistreating the non-functional chief justice and his family on the day he was to appear before the Supreme Judicial Council.

Recording his statement before an inquiry tribunal, headed by Justice Ijaz Afzal of the Peshawar High Court, SHO of the Kohsar police station, Rukhsar Mehdi denied charges against him and said he was rather away from the place where the CJ was reportedly roughed up.

He claimed that some strangers in police uniform were present on the spot where the CJ and his wife were manhandled and forced to ride an official car before proceeding to the Supreme Court where the Supreme Judicial Council was to meet on March 13.

The tribunal was constituted by the Supreme Court which observed that police was a party in the case and the inquiry into the manhandling of the CJ by them would be something meaningless.

When Rukhsar Mehdi was shown a picture published in a section of press in which the chief justice was surrounded by a number of police officers and a person whose face was not visible grabbing the chief justice by the hair, he said picture was genuine but he could not recognise the hand of the hidden man.

When Justice Afzal asked him to recognise a police inspector, the SHO said the man-in-uniform was a stranger and not an officer of the Islamabad police.

"I have spent years in the capital police but I have never seen this man before," he said.

Two press reporters, who appeared before the tribunal as witnesses, told the tribunal that Rukhsar Mehdi along with other police high-ups was present on the scene and he pushed the head of the chief justice.

Shakeel Anjum, a crime reporter, said that Rukhsar Mehdi and a bearded guard of the Inspector General of Police, along with other police officers, tried to force the chief justice to sit in the car. He said the chief justice first reprimanded him in a loud voice and then slapped him.

However, Rukhsar Mehdi denied that he was slapped by the chief justice.

Another reporter, Yasir Malik, confirmed that all high-ups of police, including the IGP and SSP, and officers of the district administration were present when the chief justice was manhandled.

He told the tribunal that after some time when he had decided to get in the Balochistan House, the chief justice asked the IGP who was Mehdi.

“He has misbehaved me and my wife. I am a Baloch and I will see him," the reporter quoted the chief justice as saying.

The then Acting Chief Justice Javed Iqbal took a suo moto notice of the incident on the basis of a picture published in a national daily on March 14.