KARACHI: Five officials of the paramilitary Rangers force were arrested on Tuesday in connection with the death of Aftab Ahmed – the coordinator of Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) leader Dr Farooq Sattar – under the custody of Sindh Rangers.
Sources in Sindh Rangers told Geo News that the incident of Aftab Ahmed’s death was regrettable which they added will be thoroughly investigated. They said the five Rangers officials were arrested after an initial investigation against them and added that the officials’ physical remand will also be taken if deemed necessary.
The Rangers sources said that the code of conduct was badly violated in the custodial death of Aftab Ahmed.
Development comes after the orders of Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Raheel Sharif to investigate the unfortunate incident. The probe was immediately kicked off after suspending the suspected Rangers officials in the wake of the army chief’s orders.
Ahmed had died the second day after the paramilitary force, which enjoys special policing powers of taking suspects into 90-day custody without arrest warrants in Karachi, remanded him into its custody.
Ahmed was arrested by the Rangers three days before his death earlier this month. A Karachi court had handed over his custody to the paramilitary force for questioning. His postmortem report revealed that approximately 35 to 40 per cent of the body surface was found congested due to multiple bruises.
Immediately, after Ahmed’s death, Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Raheel Sharif ordered an investigation to ascertain the cause of death and find out the truth for justice to be done. Before that, the Rangers constituted a committee to determine the cause of the demise.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had also directed Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan to contact the Sindh government as well as the military authorities for a judicial inquiry into the death.
Under the law, it is mandatory to carry out a judicial inquiry into custodial death of every person, who breathed his or her last during detention with police or any other force. The Section 176 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) governs such deaths. Either a judicial inquiry has to be conducted or a murder case has to be registered against the concerned personnel.
This section says when any person dies while in police custody, the nearest magistrate empowered to hold inquests shall, and, in any other case mentioned in Section 174 of the CrPC clauses (a), (b) and (c) of sub-section (1), any magistrate so empowered may hold an inquiry into the cause of death either instead of, or in addition to, the investigation held by the police, and if he does so, he shall have all the powers in conducting it which he would have in holding an inquiry into an offence.
The magistrate holding such an inquiry shall record the evidence taken by him according to the circumstances of the case. Whenever such magistrate considers it expedient to make an examination of the dead body of any person who has been already interred, in order to discover the cause of his death, he may cause the body to be disinterred and examined.