Amar Latif Qazi, a young student of Institute of Business Administration (IBA) was reportedly brutally beaten up by rangers in Karachi on Monday.
According to Amir, he was on his way to university for a class when he encountered “a horizontally parked rangers mobile on Shahrah-e-Faisal.”
Anticipating he would get late for his class, Amar took a picture of the blocked traffic to show his teacher as justification for his late arrival in the class. This, however angered the rangers and evoked serious trouble as the rangers resorted to physical assault.
“A ranger’s official, upon witnessing this, rushed to my car immediately grabbed me and started pulling at me. He dragged me out of the car and snatched my mobile from me,” Amar said in his Facebook post.
“More ranger’s personnel gathered around and without any justification, they proceeded to kick and shove me, with their guns pointed at me. I asked them if I had done anything wrong, you can search me but why are you torturing me?,” he added.
“I pleaded them to delete the pictures and just let me go because I had to get to my class. But they continued to strangle my throat, punch me, kick me, shove me and hit me with their gun butts. Even after deleting the picture, they refused to let me go. They threw me in their mobile and took me at their HQ. An officer appeared and upon assessing the situation, the rangers let me go at his directions. The rangers just disappeared inside quickly, and left me to rot and walk back to my car, which had been impounded by the traffic police by then.”
“The way they left me untried in a hurry was a proof of my innocence and their unjustified torture over me. If the officer had perceived any threat or any wrongdoing on my part, he definitely would have not freed me. I sustained a bleeding wound injury on my forehead, possibly from a gun butt. Besides that, there were injuries to my back, knee, leg, and internally bleeding bruises on my arms and shoulders. Moreover, marks of strangulation from gripping hands were also obvious on both sides of my neck. My whole body was in tatters and immense pain,” Amar lamented.
Amar said he acknowledges that the rangers have done great work in Karachi for law and order, and as a responsible law-abiding citizen of Pakistan, he respects and admires the work of Pakistani Security forces. But this does not give them any “right to treat a Pakistani citizen in this humiliatingly inhumane and animalistic way.”
“I hope that the top officials of these security forces will investigate this matter, and take notice of this and other such incidents of civilians being mistreated by some personnel. These incidents raise a question mark and taint the good-work done by our security forces. Civilians do not pay for their heavy budget so they can boss around and exploit ordinary citizens, where institutions made for our safety become a threat to us,” Amar concluded his post.
