RAWALPINDI, Jan 10: A man attempted suicide while an under-trial prisoner died in Adiala Jail here on Friday.

A desperate man tried to commit suicide by slashing his throat outside the Lal Haveli to protest against alleged police excesses, eye witnesses said.

Javed Malangi, in his mid forties, had come to Lal Haveli to submit a complaint against the police saying that they were not releasing his taxi which was impounded some times back.

The incident happened when the federal minister for railways, Ghaus Bux Mehr, was holding an open Kutcheri there.

Malangi while waiting for his turn got desperate and slashed his throat with a blade outside the Lal Haveli. People present there, tried to take away the blade, while the policeman started beating him.

“They (the police) mercilessly dragged him by his hair, one of them even stepped on him,” an eye witness Bhatti told this reporter. The man was profusely bleeding, he added.

Talking to the people present there, Malangi said the police had been holding his cab, which was his only source of income.

He said he and his family were without food for days now.

The man, instead of being taken to hospital for treatment, was handed over to the Waris Khan police station from where he was transferred to Banni police station, sources said.

The Waris Khan police claimed that Malangi was in the Banni police custody, but the Banni police denied it.

Federal information minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed’s staff misbehaved with the journalists, who tried to cover the incident. One of his staff asked the police to pick up a reporter for “unnecessarily” interfering in the matter.

Mr Ahmed, on the journalists’ protest, apologized for his staff’s misbehaviour.

In the other incident, Mohammad Yousaf, it has been learnt, was sick for the past few days and had been hospitalized in the jail hospital. He was also a drug addict.

He was being tried on charges of assault under a case registered with Sihala Police Station in August last year.

One of his relatives, who had come to the District Headquarters Hospital, to receive the body, said the family had deserted him because of his addiction and involvement in criminal activities.