Police nab woman to make husband surrender

[Naveed Yaseen]

by Shakeel Anjum
A mother of three children, including two teenage girls and one 10-year-old boy, is allegedly being used by the Islamabad Police as a ‘bargaining chip’, after locking her up in a women’s police station to make her husband allegedly involved in a kidnapping case surrender to them.

The three children, living without any elder with them in their house in Shahzad Town, on the outskirts of the federal capital, are allegedly facing threats from their father’s opponent and seeking protection after their mother is nabbed “without committing any offence”.

The mother of three children was allegedly arrested by police just to make her absconding husband surrender to police in a case of kidnapping, which was “framed against him because of some money dispute with one of his relatives.”

This might be for the first time in the history of Islamabad that police decided to pick up family members of someone against the arrest of a suspect.

This shocking abuse of power by the Islamabad Police surfaced when the two daughters of the woman visited ‘The News’ office in the capital to seek help for the release of their mother. According to them, police were not even allowing them to meet their mother.

“Our mother is innocent and not involved in any offence,” Kanwal and Komal said adding that police were using their mother as a ‘bargain chip’. “Police are threatening to arrest us too, if our father doesn’t surrender,” they claimed.

“Earlier, police humiliated our 10-year-old brother, Hamza Ayyaz, and handcuffed him publicly and dragged him to the police station,” the girls said. However, they freed him after a couple of days, they added.

“Our father may be involved in crime but why are we being punished for the offence which we never committed,” they questioned.

DSP (Shahzad Town Circle) Ishaq Warraich, when contacted, took up the case and managed a detailed meeting of the two girls with their mother in the women’s police station.

The station house officer (SHO) of Shahzad Town Police Station, when contacted for his comments by ‘The News,’ said that a four-year-old girl disappeared from Shahzad Town and police registered a case on July 29, 2008 against unidentified captors on the complaint of Nighat Ali, mother of the missing girl.

Police started investigation and during probe it was revealed that Ayyaz was involved in girl’s kidnapping. However the suspect disappeared and police could not arrest him, the SHO said. When asked why police arrested Salma, wife of the suspect, he claimed that she was also involved in the kidnapping of the girl.

http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=143326