KARACHI, Sept 19: The slow-moving police inquiry into the murder of a newly-wed NED couple suffered a serious crisis of credibility on Wednesday when the groom’s father complained that the investigators gave him the third-degree and harassed his family, including unmarried daughters.

A chemical report issued on Sept 13 confirmed that NED graduates Mohammad Azeem and Beenish were poisoned to death. They had been found dead the next morning of their wedding night in mysterious circumstances in their North Nazimabad apartment on Aug 11.

The complaints of Abdul Majeed, father of the deceased groom, come in the shape of an application written to police high-ups. Mr Majeed has alleged in his application that the “investigation team working under the supervision of DIG Falak Khursheed is only busy in saving the real culprits and have avoided to submit a report before court”.

City police chief Azhar Ali Farooqui told Dawn that he had not yet received the application seeking the transfer of the investigation of FIR 391/2007 registered at the Taimuria police station.

Asked what action he would take when the application reached him, he said: “There is a set procedure for this type of applications. A board comprising three senior police officers will be formed to assess the application. If they feel that the request for the transfer of the investigation is genuine, it will be transferred.”

Mr Majeed states in his application that he was taken to the Taimuria and Gulberg police stations several times and police officials also paid repeated visits to his home.

“The investigation team has been very harsh with me and has subjected me to third-degree torture at Gulberg police station.”

A senior police officer told Dawn on the condition of anonymity that a suspect is hung upside down from the ceiling and beaten up in such a way that bruises and contusions do not show when he is given the third-degree.

“But third-degree is applied in view of the suspect’s condition. If he is an elderly person, making him stand for two to three hours at a stretch would amount to giving him the third-degree,” he said, adding that results obtained from four days of tactful questioning could also be obtained by torturing a suspect for four hours.

Mr Majeed states in his application that “I was mercilessly beaten and told by the police officials not to implicate Samad and Ghayur.”

Samad and Ghayur were the two close friends of the deceased groom. Mr Majeed states in his application that Beenish had rejected Sarmad’s proposal during their student days. He adds that his son and Sarmad had a fight when the latter continued to send “obnoxious emails” to the girl. However, the rivals patched up when they found themselves working in the same company upon graduation.

“These police officials have made my life miserable and taken me to undisclosed locations after blindfolding me and have been visiting my house at odd hours of night and have not only misbehaved with my wife, Nasim Akhtar, and harassed her. They also misbehaved and harassed my four unmarried daughters and have forced them to come to the office of town police officer…Moreover, cash and jewellery have also been taken away by these police officials from the apartment of my son,” states Mr Majeed in his application.

Rejecting Mr Majeed’s accusations, DIG West Falak Khursheed told Dawn that if the investigation team had employed torture as a means of extracting a confession from the suspects, they would have solved the case by now.

“In fact, we waited for the chemical examination report for a month. The fact of the matter is that the girl was killed in the apartment of her in-laws. Regardless of the fact that the couple was administered poison, her jaw bone was found broken. Police learnt about the murder case from the hospital and not from the family, who had disturbed the crime scene by the time we got there.”

The high-ranking police officer said he would have no problem if the investigation was taken from him. “But it is curious that the groom’s father should seek a transfer of the investigation of the case. The actual complainant in the case is not he but the girl’s brother.”