LARKANA, June 18: The Larkana circuit bench of the Sindh High Court (SHC) on Monday gave deputy inspector general of police and superintendent (investigation) of police 20 days to arrest people involved in the murder 11 months ago of four members of a family.

The petitioner, Yousuf Narjio, whose father Head Constable Hakim Ali, mother Kashmir Khatoon, sister Shamshad and her 14-day-old son Abbas were killed in the gory incident in Allahabad locality of Larkana said that police had failed to arrest the people nominated in the FIR including Sub-Inspector Qalandar Bakhsh Narejo and Head Constable Mohammad Mithal Narijo.

The high court bench in its orders passed on June 13 had directed the RPO of Sukkur to appear in court on June 18 to inform about the steps so far taken for the arrest of the accused and also submit a report as to why his steps had not been borne any fruits.

The RPO did not turn up but the DIG Akhtar Gorchani, SP investigation Nisar Channa and other concerned police officers appeared.

The SP said in his statement that police had conducted several raids on the houses of the accused but they had already escaped. Besides, the additional inspector general of police (investigation) had deleted the names of the accused sub-inspector and head constable from the charge sheet and put them in column No2, he added.

The DIG had said in his statement on May 28 that police had raided the houses of the accused in the jurisdiction of 20-mile (Shikarpur district) but did not find them there.

The DIG, following directives from the Chief Minister’s House on Dec 14, 2006, had formed a team, which was assigned the task to trace out and arrest the killers nominated in the FIR registered at the Dari police station within 15 days.

But the team comprising Larkana Taluka Investigation Officer Sahib Shah, TPO Jhali Kalwari Shikarpur, SHOs of Dari police station and 20-mile police station Shikarpur and supervising investigation officer of Dari police station failed to arrest any of the accused within given time, said Mr Narijo.

Ayaz Soomro who represented the petitioner said that law did not allow anybody to strike off the names of the accused from an FIR without conducting proper investigations.

The DIG prayed the court to grant police a month's time for the arrest of the accused but the court did not agree and asked him to arrest them till the next date of hearing on July 9.