Kin claim arrested persons innocent

Following the attack on police buildings and vehicles, officials of the detection of crime branch (DCB) arrested many people in Teen Darwaja area. However, the relatives of the arrested have cried foul and claimed that the actual miscreants are roaming free while the innocents are in police custody.

Most of the people arrested are either labourers, people working at shops in the area or do business on the street markets of Teen Darwaja. Their families were unaware of their arrests. Meanwhile, relatives who reached DCB office on Thursday claim that police have arrested innocent people.

They have even alleged bias, claiming that those from the minority community were detained while the rest were allowed to go. Talking to DNA, Usman Malik, father of Mohsin Malik (23) who was arrested by the DCB, said, “My son works as a supervisor in a reputed city-based automobile showroom at its Kankaria branch.”

Mohsin was on an official visit to the Teen Darwaja market, along with two other sales executives who were not from the minority community. “All the three were nabbed by the police after the riots. But the two were allowed to go later when the company intervened while my son was arrested,” Malik said.

Mohsin Khan (27), Taufiq Malik (23) and Sarfaraz Haider (27) – all the three working as salesmen at Juta Bazaar at Teen Darwaja—were returning home in an auto rickshaw after the riots. “The rickshaw was stopped and they were arrested. They don’t even know what they were arrested for,” Ismail Malik, a relative, told DNA.

Shahid Kherani (35), salesman at a jewellery shop, was arrested when he was out on the road. His father Hanif Kherani claimed that his son was innocent.

Meanwhile, police sources in DCB say that those who have been arrested were nabbed red-handed from the scene of crime.