CHITRAL: Districtnazim Maghfirat Shahhas demanded of the Peshawar High Court chief justice to order judicial inquiry into the illegal weeklong detention of dozens of peaceful protesters and their torture by the local police.

He made the demand during a news conference here, where district naib nazim Maulana Abdul Shakoor, Maulana Jamshed Ahmad of the Jamaat-i-Islami, Maulana Hussain Ahmad of the JUI-F and other political leaders were in attendance.

The nazim claimed that the police arrested more than 60 people on the charge of ransacking a police station on April 21 but didn`t produce them in the court of law for a week violating their rights.

He said it was the basic right of every arrested man to be produced before a judge within 20 hours of arrest but that right was denied to those arrested in Chitral.

`To conceal their illegal detention, the police wrote in the records that the arrests were made on April 28. During the illegal detention, the people were badly tortured,` he said.

Mr Shah said the protesters were peaceful and that they didn`t cause any damage to public and property and dispersed peacefully. He said the police `inappropriately` booked 22 protesters under the Anti-Terrorism Act but the government ordered the withdrawal of the terrorism sections from the case proving the inaptness of the action.

The nazim warned that if the police of ficials involved in the illegal detention and torture of protesters got off scot-free, then the peaceful situation in Chitral would `grow bitter`.

He ordered judicial inquiry into the matter to punish the policemen, who misused power. Correspondent