RAHIM YAR KHAN: Police arrested four people, the alleged accomplices of Kamran Shah, the main suspect of a video torture case, late on Thursday in different raids, while, according to sources, Shah escaped the arrest with the connivance of his police official friends.

Shah came to limelight after a video footage, where he is seen torturing people, went viral on social media prompting the intervention of the chief minister into the issue.

Police raided the house of PM-N councillor Chaudhry Muhammad Ali in Iqbal Nagar also but his son, Hasan, escaped.

Shah shared a message on social media on Friday that the videos involving him, had been edited, adding that he had tortured different people for harassing his son.

District Police Officer (DPO) Zeeshan Asghar and Bahawalpur Regional Police Officer Ehsan Sadiq did not speak on the issue when contacted.

The issue gathered more media attention when the Islam Welfare Foundation president told a press conference in the city that she had received a threatening letter from Shah for sharing his footage on social media sites. She said the letter, wrapped in a stone, was thrown into her house on Friday.

She said she, being a social activist, was struggling for human rights and had visited B-Division police station to report about the hooliganism of Shah in the past but police always supported the criminals.

She said she had also shared the torture videos with district and divisional police heads and despite the visible presence of Shah in the videos, the police bosses had ordered a first information report without nominating him.

She claimed that she had some more footage where Shah was seen being cruel to college girls and she would share them with the district coordination officer and the DPO.

Another press conference was called by Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf leader Rana Raheel Ahmed where he said the torture cell in the patronage of influential political figures in the city was a question mark on the government.

He alleged that Shah was running the torture cell in Satellite Town with the support of a PML-N MNA and his two brothers where poor and political opponents were stripped and tortured without any check.

He said the DPO has appointed B-Division Station House Officer Muhammad Shabbir to arrest the culprits, while he himself was a culprit in the case as he could be seen with Shah in the torture videos.

Shah would call himself the PML-N Youth Wing district president.

Adnan Rasheed, also a PML-N leader, however, contradicted Shah’s claim at a press conference, saying that he was the real district president of the PML-N Youth Wing.

He alleged Shah had formed a gang with the alleged patronage of the local ruling MNA.

Mr Rasheed said he had been appointed the district president under a notification by Youth Wing Central President retired Capt Safdar and Punjab president Abid Sher Ali.

Published in Dawn, July 30th, 2016