Pakistan police officers accused of chopping off hands

June 7 TOI

Police officials in Pakistan's Punjab province have been accused of chopping off the left hands of two alleged thieves while they were in custody.

Police arrested Ghulam Mustafa, 30, and Liaquat Ali, 28, from Ghagoo Mandi in Vehari district of Punjab, some 340 kilometers from Lahore, last week in connection with cellphone and electric wire theft.The police shifted both the accused on Friday evening to Bahawal Victoria Hospital Bahawalpur where it emerged that their left hands had been chopped off. Doctors said the chopped off wrist of one of the alleged thieves could have been attached with his arm through surgery but police brought the patient about 10 hours after the incident.

The police officials accused in the incident, however, denied cutting off the hands of the alleged robbers. “Both the accused tried to commit suicide by cut off their left wrists,” they claimed.

Sadiq Ali Dogar, a police official, suspended five police officers, including a station officer Aslam Cheema, and registered a case against them.

Cheema has denied the allegation, saying that both the accused had cut their left wrists with blades in a bid to commit suicide in the lockup.

Khuda Bakhsh, father of Mustafa, told reporters that the police subjected his son and the other accused to severe torture after getting failure to get a bribe. He said it was brutal on the part of the police to chop off the hand of the accused in custody. “The policemen responsible for the gruesome act should be given exemplary punishment,” he said.Bakhsh demanded Punjab chief minister Shahbaz Sharif to act on incident. The accused had admitted their crime, Dogar said. He said the police were providing treatment facilities to the injured at the hospital. Dogar said a two-member team comprising senior police officials had been constituted to complete the probe into the incident within three days. Islamic laws suggest the punishment of chopping off the hands of a thief.