A court in Gujranwala has ordered 14-day judicial remand for five police personnel, including former Mustafaabad station house officer Hassan Imran Syed, in a case arising from the death of a man, Muhammad Rizwan, in a disputed police encounter in Kasur in July 2024.
According to the October 9 report in Dunya, the five accused were presented before Senior Civil Judge Ehsan Sabir. Investigators from the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) sought a further nine days of physical remand, but the court instead ordered the officers to be sent to jail.
The accused named in the report are Hassan Imran Syed, sub-inspectors Tariq Mahmood and Muhammad Sadiq, and police personnel Muhammad Ishtiaq and Muhammad Yaqoob.
The case concerns allegations that Rizwan was detained by Mustafaabad police and subsequently killed in an encounter staged to conceal a custodial death. Rizwan's family disputes the police account of the incident. These allegations have been investigated by the FIA but have not been finally determined by a trial court.
On October 2, the Lahore High Court rejected pre-arrest bail petitions of police officers in the case. Reports from the Associated Press of Pakistan and Daily Times said lawyers for the complainant argued that Rizwan had been arrested in connection with a robbery case before being killed while in custody. The officers were subsequently arrested following disorder on the court premises.
On October 3, a Gujranwala court handed five police personnel to the FIA on five-day physical remand. The latest judicial-remand order follows that period of questioning.
In an account provided to Margalla News, citing an interview with the deceased's brother Irfan, the family alleges that police registered multiple cases against Rizwan within hours, and that CCTV records contradicted the official timing of the reported encounter. The documents and footage referred to in the account were not available for independent examination, so these particulars remain attributed to the family.
Irfan, a lawyer, says he has pursued legal proceedings for more than two years to obtain accountability for his brother's death. The family says Rizwan had a three-month-old child and had become a father after 13 years of marriage.
The officers remain accused persons, not convicted offenders. The case now proceeds through the criminal justice process, in which the prosecution must prove its allegations and the defendants retain the right to respond.