HYDERABAD, May 4: In response to a complaint seeking judicial inquiry, Mr Justice S. Ahmed Sarwana of the Sindh High Court has directed the additional advocate general, Sindh, Masood A. Noorani, to ascertain facts regarding police harassment of residents of the Dargah Asadullah Shah village.
The complaint was earlier sent through a telegram.
Fixing May 12 as the next hearing date, the judge on Friday asked the authorities to ensure presence of police officials concerned in the court.
In his complaint, the applicant, Nisar Hussain, had accused the police of harassing villagers and had sought institution of a judicial inquiry in this regard.
The court had tagged the telegram with the constitutional petition previously by Ms Noor Bibi, mother of the applicant, and was disposed of with certain directives to the police.
Mr Hussain had contended that the lives of the residents of the said village had been ruined by collusion between a local landlord, Ghulam Hussain Chandio, and the Site police.
Mr Chandio, he said, owned a piece of agricultural land adjacent to the Dargah Asadullah Shah.
The complainant had informed the court that his grandmother had filed a constitutional petition and the court had disposed of the same, restraining the police from harassing the families of petitioner (his grandmother).
The DSP, Amir Raza, and the SHO of the SITE police station, Asad Jehangir, after being annoyed by the filing of petition in the court’s order, had retaliated by implicating villagers, including his uncle, in false cases of intoxication.
He informed the court that on February 13, the said DSP and the SHO, along with other police officials, had trespassed into the house of Malook Shah. After having failed to make any recovery, the police officials had arrested Malook Shah’s daughter Ms Taj Bibi as well as Fatima, daughter of Jaffar Shah.
The petitioner said that the landlord had also kept his father, Haji Shah, in wrongful confinement in Qasimabad, deprived him of Rs50,000 and a cellular phone.
He said that Haji Shah was later handed over to the DSP and the SHO of the police station concerned in a false case of possessing charas and had only released him after receiving Rs70,000 in bribe from his mother, Ms Aisha.
On Feb 13, 2002, four persons were challaned under Section 9-C of the Narcotics Act.
The police, he said, had again entered some of the villagers’ houses on March 28 and had arrested Shaukat Shah while his daughter, Ms Shumaila, was beaten up. A case, he added, in this regard had been pending in the court of the civil judge concerned.
Contending that the police had almost confined the villagers to their houses as the police mobile vehicles were deployed in front of their houses, allowing no one to enter or leave the village.