LAHORE: Personnel of the Crime Control Department (CCD) Chuhng have been accused of allegedly detaining two labourer brothers and demanding money in exchange for their release. The wives of both men have approached the Sessions Court in search of redress.
Petitions were filed in the court of Additional Sessions Judge Imran Javed Gul by Fauzia and Iqra, seeking the recovery of their husbands. The DIG Operations, DSP CCD Chuhng and the SHO have been made respondents in the petitions.
The petitioners’ position is that their husbands, Abid and Saghar, were allegedly taken into custody by CCD personnel three days earlier, but that no information about either man has been provided since.
The women alleged that CCD personnel are demanding money to release the two brothers. According to them, a record of the telephone calls allegedly made by the personnel is also available.
Advocate Babar Ali presented both women in court and submitted that they had approached the court for the recovery of their husbands.
Hearing the petitions, Additional Sessions Judge Imran Javed Gul sought a report from Chuhng police.
The remedy invoked here is a habeas petition under Section 491 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which empowers a sessions court to direct that a person allegedly held in illegal or improper custody be produced before it. It is one of the few immediate judicial remedies available to families in cases where a detention is not acknowledged on the record.
The procedure is designed to move quickly. On admitting such a petition, the court typically appoints a bailiff or seeks a report from the police station concerned, requiring the department to state on the record whether the person is in its custody and, if so, under what legal authority. Where custody is admitted, the department must show the corresponding entry in the station diary and the case in which the arrest was effected.
The significance of the twenty-four-hour rule is central to matters of this kind. Article 10 of the Constitution and Section 61 of the Code of Criminal Procedure require that a person arrested be produced before a magistrate within twenty-four hours of arrest, excluding travel time. A detention extending three days without production or acknowledgment would fall outside that framework.
The Crime Control Department is a specialised investigation and operations wing of Punjab Police established in 2025, which took over functions previously performed by the Crime Investigation Agency. Its units operate across the province’s divisions and are tasked with action against organised crime, dacoit gangs and repeat offenders.
Because such units operate with a degree of operational autonomy, oversight mechanisms — departmental accountability, the district judiciary’s habeas jurisdiction and the provincial police complaints framework — carry particular weight in cases where allegations of unacknowledged detention arise.
No response from the CCD or from Chuhng police has been placed on the record so far. The allegations levelled in the petitions remain untested, and the court’s direction at this stage is confined to seeking a report from the police station concerned.
The matter is expected to proceed once that report is submitted.
-Reported By Shaheen Atiq
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