Brep people ‘conditionally’ drop complaints against SHO
BREP: The residents of Brep have decided to drop their complaints against Station House Officer (SHO) Mastuj Muhammad Shafi Shifa over a case related to murder of a youth allegedly by a constable and the wife of the deceased last year on the condition of his transfer.
The decision was taken after a team of police officers, including additional SP Chitral Noor Jamal Khan and Subdivisional Police Officer (SDPO) Muhammad Zaman, visited Brep a couple of days ago and recorded the complaints of the relatives of the deceased man.
The police officers told them to either submit their complaints in writing or enter into a compromise with the SHO, local sources told ChitralToday. Later, they added, the residents held a meeting and decided to drop their complaints but added that the SHO should be transferred from Mastuj.
The complaints included allegations that the SHO had forced the relatives to pay fares amounting to Rs35,000 for the transportation of the police team investigating the case, pressured the witnesses to withdraw their statements and raided the house of a relative of the deceased who has been leading the case making it impossible for him to appear in the Peshawar High Court Swat bench where they had filed an appeal against the grant of bail to the suspects by a local court.
Aslam Baig, 24, died on the night of April 14, 2017, when his father was away for work in Islamabad.
The wife of the deceased told the grandfather of her husband that he died of a heart attack. In October last year when his widow married a police constable from her native village of Zupu, the relatives of Baig approached the Mastuj police for the registration of a murder case against him and his new wife for allegedly murdering Baig.
The police first hesitated but then registered the FIR and arrested both the suspects about six months after the incident. The constable was later brought to the house of the deceased where he confessed to the murder but claimed not guilty in front of a local court a day later.
Sources told ChitralToday that when some relatives of the deceased approached the police authorities in Chitral and complained that the suspects were released by the local court on the basis of a poor police challan, the police authorities summoned the investigation record and the court judgment from the court.
The judgment showed that the court had released the murder suspects on bail mainly on two grounds. One was the late reporting of the alleged murder to the police – six months after the incident – and the second was that the relatives had allegedly seen marks of wounds on the body of Baig and buried it without disclosing the suspected foul play in the death.
On Dec 16, 2017, a team of doctors from Chitral exhumed the body of the deceased in the presence of a magistrate and collected samples for forensic examinations. The samples were sent to Lahore for laboratory tests. The relatives were told that the reports would come after about three weeks.
However, even after the passage of about two months, the police have not received the reports for submission to the court to add to the challan.