Vendor thrown into pan of boiling oil

A case in which a fruit vendor was apparently pushed into a vat of boiling oil after he refused to provide fruit free of charge to a policeman has drawn the attention of human rights groups, with senior police officials saying the matter will be investigated.

In the incident, reported to have taken place on Wednesday night, a vendor, Safdar Ali, based in the Shafiqabad area, suffered 70 per cent burns across his body after he resisted giving fruit and juice to two policemen.

The vendor is under treatment at the Mayo Hospital, and doctors fear his injuries are so acute that he will not survive.

Safdar has given a statement in which he said that policemen routinely visited his shop in the Shafiqabad area and demanded he give them fruit and glasses of juice without payment.

He has also said that while he did so at times, like others in the area, he had in the past been subjected to severe beatings after attempting to resist, "because I cannot afford to give away goods for free."

The victim has claimed that two policemen who visited his shop on Wednesday first harshly abused him after he refused to hand over fruit and then began beating him. When he still declined to give the items, he was pushed into a pan of boiling oil at the stall of a vendor of fried items such as 'samosas'.

The incident apparently took place in the full view of other shopkeepers in the area. Though they have confirmed the incident, the vendors are declining to give evidence against the policemen or identify them, saying that "we too fear harassment and even death."

The brother of Safdar Ali, Mohammed Nazeer, while reporting the matter to the press, has claimed that another brother, Mohammed Nasir, has meanwhile been arrested by police as a means to exert pressure on the family and force them into silence over the matter.

Police at the Shafiqabad Police station meanwhile deny any such instance took place. They maintain Safdar in fact "attempted suicide" after learning his brother had been held on a drugs charge, and that he was "now trying to frame the police."

Doctors treating Safdar maintain his severe injuries do not "resemble those typically inflicted when a suicide attempt by self immolation is made."

Human rights groups, such as the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) have also pointed out that while the full facts of the matter are yet to be ascertained, it is "not likely" that someone would attempt suicide because his brother had been arrested.

A spokesman at the office of the Inspector-General of Police (IGP), Punjab, agreed that the incident was "shocking," if it had taken place at all, and that the matter was being inquired into.

Police have frequently been accused of brutality in the past while the harassment of shopkeepers and coercion to provide food items and so on is also a regular event across the country.