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Mujra at Harbanspura Police Station: Police ‘party’ with arrested dancers

* Dancer alleges policemen slapped them
* Constable says no harm in professional dancers performing
* Advocate says women should not be held at men’s police station

By Rana Tanveer

LAHORE: Harbanspura Police forced four dancers to stage a mujra at the police station, and ‘manhandled’ them until morning after arresting them from a mehndi function, Daily Times has learnt.

Sources at Harbanspura Police Station said they arrested four dancers – Shabnam, Farzana, Reema and Saima – on Saturday night from the mehndi of Naveed Khan in the Fateh Garh area, and made them dance at the police station all night. Saima and Shabnam, after getting released on bail on Monday, told Daily Times the police had forced them to perform in the office of the station house officer (SHO).

They alleged that when they refused to perform, a policeman severely tortured one of their fellows, Farzana. They claimed that after half an hour of ‘entertainment’, the SHO went out of the police station and six other policemen, including Assistant Sub-inspector (ASI) Arshad, constables Asif and Sibt-e-Hasan and others whom they could recognise by face, started manhandling them for more than four hours while forcing them to dance, which continued from 12am to 4am.

No rest: Saima alleged the policemen also slapped the dancers when they asked for some rest. She alleged the policemen told them that if they would dance with consistency, they would be released in the morning.

No harm: Constable Asif, who attended the mujra, earlier denied being part of it, but later said there was no harm in making professional dancers perform. He said even if they had done so, no one should have any problem with that.

Defying law: Legal experts say that women accused of a crime could not be kept in the male lockup and the police violated law by taking the dancers to a male police station. Law expert Aftab Ahmed Bajwa told Daily Times that according to Section 167 of the Criminal Procedure Code, police were bound to send the accused women to the Racecourse Women Police Station, from where they should have been presented before the magistrate for judicial remand. He said the police officials who kept the women in the police station had violated Section 155-C of the Police Order 2002.

Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Malik Muhammad Mansha denied the policemen made the women dance, but did not deny their detention. He said they were only slinging mud on the policemen. He said if they were tortured, they should have taken a medical certificate for action against the police.

Sub-inspector (SI) Imdad Ali, whose signature was on the FIR, told Daily Times that he did not know about the incident and he was not at the police station that night. He said the moharrar registered the FIR, but wrote his name on it.

According to FIR number 128/ 2009, the police also arrested five allegedly drunk men – Zahid Khan, Muhammad Naeem, Naseer Ahmed, Muhammad Shafiq and Dilawar Khan – from the scene. It read that 13 police officials, namely ASI Zafar Iqbal, ASI Ashfaq Ahmed, ASI Akhtar Ali and constables Alamgir, Nazar Abbas, Abdul Qadir, Muhammad Jamil, Muhammad Asif, Zulfiqar Ali, Muhammad Raza, Khalid Mahmood, and Riaz Ahmed, raided the ceremony and arrested the accused.

Talking to Daily Times, accused Muhammad Shafiq alleged that he and Naseer were not present at the event but the police arrested them when they reached the police station to get the others released. He alleged that the police had put on record a recovery of only Rs 5,630, but all recovery from the accused was more than Rs 150,000.

The FIR, meanwhile, is inconsistent as police mentioned twice in it that four women dancers were arrested, while at one place only three dancers were mentioned. All the accused have been released on bail.

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