PESHAWAR, July 3: An innocent person has been languishing here in the central prison for more than a year due to the negligence of the local police.
The prisoner, Fayyaz son of Yousaf, was arrested by the officials of Faqirabad police station in an untraced case. Later on, the police realized that they had arrested an innocent person and decided to release him, but they forgot to fulfil the legal requirements so the person continued to suffer in the prison.
In the above case the police had already arrested three persons and mentioned their names in the column of accused in the final challan of the case. However, as Fayyaz was innocent, therefore his name was not mentioned in the column of accused. Under section 169 of the Criminal Procedure Code if evidence is deficient against an accused, the concerned police officer has to release him after furnishing a surety bond.
It is learnt that after more than a year when the prisoner realised that neither his trial had been conducted nor he was produced before the court, he filed a bail petition before the district and sessions judge, Peshawar, Ziauddin Khattak. When the petition was taken up for hearing on Tuesday, the public prosecutor, Muhammad Zubair Khan, after going through the challan of the case, pointed out that the police had declared him innocent after investigation and so he was not an accused in the case.
The court inquired that when he was not an accused then why he was behind the bars and in what capacity his bail petition would be heard. The court summoned the SHO of Faqirabad police station, Misbahullah, who stated that in May 2001, when the said robbery had occurred, Nisar Khan was the SHO. He added that the investigation officer had decided to release the accused after fulfilling the requirements under section 169 of CrPC, but they forgot to do so.
The court dismissed the bail application on the ground that the applicant was not an accused, therefore, he could not file application under section 498 of CrPC. The court directed the police to fulfil the legal requirements so that the innocent applicant could be released at the earliest.