Basant festival falls victim to uncertainty, suicide blasts

AFTER many many years, the year has passed by without Basant celebrations in Lahore. The trademark festival fell victim to political uncertainty and suicide bombings.
Though the festival organisers tried their level best to squeeze in the event as they were persuaded by the kite and string manufacturers. Some one million people live off the festival sales during the Basant season. However, February 18 elections and later a series of suicide blasts killed off whatever the faint hopes the Basant ravers were having.
One of the festival organisers, Zulfiqar Chaudhry, said the new government in Punjab was least interested in Basant celebrations as it was busy finalising the real government agenda.
This years there were no takers, said Zulfiqar. However, he said the next year if the courts allowed Basant will be celebrated at all costs. Courts had banned the festival after a series of throat slitting incidents caused by sharp plastic strings. “A new security safety-net would be introduced next year to allay the fears of administration,” said Zulfiqar.
Reward for catching robbers
“THE reward he got for catching robbers was death,” said Mohammed Azeem, cousin of Abdul Basit, who allegedly died because of police torture, says a report in a local English broadsheet.
Azeem said the late 38-year-old Basit had caught two robbers a couple of months ago, even after being injured by a bullet that went through his right hand. He said Basit and his elder brother, Abdul Majid, caught the robbers after the latter broke into their house.
The two brothers then handed over the robbers to the Baghbanpura police. Basit went to the Ghurki Trust Hospital where doctors operated upon his injured hand. He has been having physiotherapy on the hand ever since.
On Monday, the Baghbanpura police detained Basit while he was about to go to a physiotherapy session. “They tortured and killed him in the police station and registered a false drug-peddling case against him,” Azeem said.
Azeem said Basit was a taxi driver in the UAE and had come to Pakistan on vacations. He said Basit and his family were living at Wapda Head Office Colony in the house of Abdul Majid, who is an accounts officer. Another brother of Basit, Abdul Mateen, is a university professor in Islamabad.
Azeem said that on Monday, Basit was on the doorstep of his house when Sub-Inspector Mohammed Iqbal, accompanied by constables Ali Raza and Shehzad Ahmad, approached him. The policemen accused Basit of smoking hash, spoke harshly to him, and took him away in a police vehicle. They registered a case against him and detained him at the police station, Azeem said.
He said: “At 9:45am on Tuesday, someone from the Baghbanpura Police Station called us and told us that Basit was dead and his body was at the Mayo Hospital’s morgue.”
Later, the Baghbanpura police, on the orders of senior police officers, registered a murder case against the three policemen involved. The family of the deceased accused the policemen of having ‘links’ with the robbers Basit and his brother had caught. Basit’s family said the policemen had killed him to settle a score.
Court directive on false cases
THE Lahore High Court (LHC) told the police not to implicate married couples in false cases. “It is an illegal practice and tantamount to intruding into their lives,” said a judge.
The judge was hearing a petition filed by Usma Batool. She requested the court to quash an FIR (first information report) that was lodged by her father, Nawaz, with the Khushab police.
Nawaz blamed Zahidul Hasan for abducting Usma. Usma said she was happily married to Hasan. She added that no one had abducted her or forced her to marry Hasan.
She said her father had lodged the FIR to harass her. She said Nawaz had married her to a person after taking money from him. She said she got divorce from her previous husband and married Hasan.
Usma’s counsel Rao Abdul Jabbar said Khushab’s sessions judge had already directed officials to take action against Nawaz for filing a false case against the couple and accusing them of committing adultery.
The judge disposed of the petition after a Khushab police investigation officer told the court that the FIR had been proved fabricated.