PESHAWAR: Peshawar police have said that a man arrested on charges of desecrating a grave in the Badh Bher area was subsequently killed in a shooting by unidentified armed assailants.
Police said the suspect, a 19-year-old identified as Salman, was taken into custody on Monday at a local cemetery, where he was found interfering with the grave of a recently buried child.
The case was registered on the complaint of a resident of Deh Sheikh in the Badh Bher area. According to the FIR, residents of Deh Sheikh maintain their own local cemetery, where the area’s deceased are buried.
The FIR states that on September 21 the cemetery caretaker caught a man who had exhumed the body of a girl aged around two or three years. The suspect was apprehended at the scene with the help of local residents, according to the complaint.
The FIR was registered under various sections of the law covering the desecration of places of worship or burial grounds, rape, the Child Protection and Welfare Act and the Foreigners Act. Police said the Foreigners Act section was included because the accused was from Afghanistan.
The complaint further alleges that the accused had previously disturbed graves and that five such incidents had occurred in the past, after which residents had to rebury the remains. These allegations are contained in the FIR and have not been established before any court.
The police account that the arrested man was later killed by unidentified armed men raises questions that only a documented inquiry can settle; where he was at the time, whether he was in custody or had been produced before a court, who was responsible for his security, and what physical evidence supports the account given.
Deaths of arrested persons attract a specific legal obligation. Police rules require an inquiry, and a post-mortem and magisterial inquiry are the ordinary course where a person dies after being taken into custody. The outcome of any such proceedings in this case has not been made public.
The death also forecloses a trial. Whatever the FIR alleges, those allegations will now never be tested in a courtroom — which removes any possibility of a judicial finding, and with it any closure for the affected family.
The case has caused distress in the locality, where residents say graves have been disturbed before. Cemeteries in peri-urban settlements are typically unlit and unwatched at night, and are maintained by the community rather than by any municipal authority.
The invocation of the Foreigners Act reflects the accused’s stated nationality. Questions of Afghan nationals’ legal status have been prominent in Pakistan through this year, from Punjab’s deportation drive to litigation over Afghan students’ right to continue their studies, and officials have publicly linked cross-border networks to security incidents. Nationality, however, is not an element of the offences alleged here, and the case should not be read as a statement about any community.
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