A number of victims have formally lodged complaints with the area police against assistant station master Maqsood Sheikh, but law enforcers have not even registered the obligatory FIR against him.
In one incident, a Khanpur court even directed the police to take legal action against the ASM and his alleged accomplices, but to no avail. One Muhammad Aslam had sought court’s help for registration of the case after being refused by the police.
The applicant had claimed that on June 23 this year some 10 people armed with clubs, axes, daggers and pistols barged into his house in Kareemabad locality at night with the ASM leading them. The intruders thrashed him and his other family members.
Later, they ransacked the house and destroyed all valuables and household goods. The assailants dragged inmates out of the house and ordered them to leave the area while kidnapping him. He was rescued by the area police the next morning when his son brought the matter into their knowledge. However, no action was taken against the assailants.
The applicant said his nephew Nadeem was accused of raping a relative girl, ‘S’, a day before they were attacked and forced to leave the area. The Khanpur police had arrested Nadeem after registering an FIR under Zina Ordinance.
However, the girl’s family also called a panchayat with ASM Maqsood headed proceedings the same day when the alleged incident took place. The panchayat offered two options to the accused family — give a girl in marriage of any of the men belonging to the ‘victim’s’ family along with Rs200,000 or leave their houses till the acceptance of the first option.
However, accused Nadeem’s family refused to accept any of the options. His parents Muhammad Sabir and Mumtaz Mai told Dawn that they had refused because they believed that the allegation against their son was baseless and levelled only to grab their houses. Families of both accused and the victim are poor and illiterate as well.
The Khanpur ASM is their relative who, however, has assumed the status of an unannounced chief of their nomadic Gaydarri tribe.
The accused family was forcibly dislodged along with their close relatives from their houses allegedly by the panchayat when they refused to obey its orders.
Families of Sabir and his brother Aslam are living a miserable life as they have to move from one door to another in search of shelter while Nadeem has been sent to jail to face the trial under Islamic laws.
A senior police official said that ‘victim’s’ medical report did not corroborate with the rape allegation.
He said a local reporter was accompanying complainants when they came to lodge the FIR and he threatened to publicize the issue to the scale of Mukhtar Mai case if the police did not register the case. This the official replied when questioned as to why the action against the accused was taken under the rape offence when the medical report did not prove the allegation.
Sub-inspector and investigation officer Malik Khuda Bakhsh said the police had once took the families of Sabir and Aslam to their houses, but they were dislodged again the next day. He also confirmed that ASM Maqsood was the self-claimed elder of the Gaydarris and he was behind the displacement of Nadeem’s family.
The matter is now with senior police authorities, was his reply, when asked why the police were taking no action against illegal displacement of the family.
Hayat Muhammad, the father of victim ‘S’, is a cobbler who lives in Gujrat to earn livelihood by setting up a stall outside a shoe shop there. He said the shop was owned by a relative of the Punjab chief minister. He showed photocopies of letters written to the Rahim Yar Khan’s DPO by the provincial education minister and one Muhammad Khan Bhatti, who introduced himself as private secretary to the CM. In the letters, the DPO was directed to cooperate with Hayat.
Hayat Muhammad refused to utter any word on the issue without consulting ASM Maqsood. He took this correspondent to the Khanpur railway station to seek permission of holding talks with reporters. Maqsood Sheikh sought excuse that neither he nor Hayat would talk on the subject because they were trying to resolve the matter within their ‘biradari’. He, however, claimed that Nadeem’s family had left the area on their own free will.