A group of Pakistan police officers allegedly stitched up the lips of a prisoner who was protesting against being tortured, officials said yesterday. Malik Mohammad Iqbal, a deputy inspector general of police, said he had ordered an inquiry after media reports of the incident and had suspended seven policemen.

But Iqbal said it was yet to be determined exactly what happened because the prisoner first accused police of the crime but later retracted his statement and said he had sewn his own lips shut.

The English-language newspaper The News reported police in Vehari, a town in central Punjab province, sewed Mohammad Hussain?s lips shut with jute yarn when he used ?filthy language? to protest against torture.

The prisoner, Mohammad Hussain, was rushed to hospital in severe pain and had his lips unstitched. Abdul Waheed, senior medical officer at Nishtar Hospital in the city of Multan, confirmed a prisoner had signs of torture on his body when he was brought for medical examination on Friday.

?He (Hussain) had torture signs on his fingers and backs. The lips were also swollen and there were marks of four stitches on his lips?, Waheed told Reuters in Multan, about 100 km (60 miles) west of Vehari. ?He was in severe pain. He was badly tortured.?

The newspaper said Hussain had earlier also tried to commit suicide by banging his head on an iron bar. Torture in police custody and jails is common in Pakistan but, perpetrators are rarely held accountable, human rights groups say.

<B>Asim TANVEER</B>