LAHORE, Nov 2: Around a dozen families, including that of a journalist, were subjected to a great deal of intimidation and inconvenience by a strong police posse which stormed into their homes unwarranted to track down a gang of kidnappers in Sultanpura, Misri Shah, on Wednesday night.

The residents, including women and children, were forced to spend a sleepless night as personnel of the Elite Force who were led by at least two SPs, barged into their homes and repeatedly subjected them to interrogation and frisking. There was no lady police but the operation reportedly continued for nearly five hours.

Residents, including Mr Shahzada Irfan, reporter of a local English newspaper, claimed that police had reached the locality in pursuit of the gang through a trekking device. But as they could not exactly locate the culprits, they broke into every house in sight, treating residents as suspects.

The siege was lifted when some policemen reportedly found a bag used by the gangsters for collecting the ransom from the lower portion of a nearby house, allowing the residents to finally take rest. But before leaving they declared some of them lucky because the bag had not been recovered from them.

According to Mr Irfan, armed police climbed the rooftop of his Jinnah Park, Sultanpura, residence with the help of bamboo ladders at around 11.30pm and started thumping closed room doors with the butts of their guns.

As the commotion greatly intimidated him and his family, including women and children, he opened the doors to find police who barged in. The women and children were separated in a room and everything was searched.

He said he identified himself but the team, led by CIA SP Masood Aziz, Cantonment Investigation SP Baber Bakht and other officers, insisted on the search saying they were looking for dangerous criminals. Everyone was interrogated separately and the statements were rechecked for over two hours.

No one misbehaved nor was anything lifted but the presence of police itself was threatening. Police finally left the house asking the family to keep the doors open as they could return anytime, Mr Irfan claimed.

He said police returned several times and when he came out of his house, he found that residents of nearly a dozen homes too were facing the same fate. He alleged that an officer told the residents that they were hunting the criminals with the help of a trekking device which was not precisely signaling their presence and was instead covering the entire locality.

He said the police officers repeatedly offered their excuses to the people, saying they had bothering them on the call of duty.

Meanwhile, speaking at a news conference, Lahore CCPO Khawaja Khalid Farooq regretted the inconvenience faced by the people, including the journalist, and said police did not intend to target anyone but to arrest criminals who were taking refuge in the locality. “We have to operate on an emergency basis in a very limited time,” he said.

He said the house of a serving DSP too was searched during the operation which was finally appreciated by the area residents.

“Police were on a professional job and were groping in dark. Through this operation we want to give the message to people and criminals that we are on our toes and we do respond swiftly,” he said.

A police spokesman however said that no trekking device was used to locate the criminals who were hunted as a result of a tip off.