Four months after returning to duty following a four-year suspension for a theft case, Constable Mohammad Azfar Heematally was arrested again on the afternoon of Friday, April 14 on a charge of loitering. The Camp Diable resident had broken into the living room of a shopkeeper and was about to enter his store when he was caught. He was arrested and placed in detention at the police station of Rivière des Anguilles. On Saturday, April 15, he was brought before the Bail and Remand Court (BRC) in Port-Louis.
It was around 12:40 pm on Friday, April 14, when the owner of a store on Route Royale, Camp Diable, who was on the second floor of his house, heard a noise from his store on the ground floor. He rushed to the place and there he saw a man he knew as a policeman and living in the village was in his living room. He was pushing a handle of a door that gives access to his store.
When asked why he was in his house, the policeman Heematally had to answer that he had come to buy a gas cylinder. However, he did not have an empty cylinder in his possession. He started to argue with the 60 year old shopkeeper, when the latter’s cousin arrived. During this discussion he had to hit the shopkeeper’s cousin. The man was injured and went to the Jawaharlall Nehru Hospital in Rose Belle for treatment.
The police were alerted and dispatched a team of officers from the Camp Diable police station to the store. Constable Heematally was arrested. He had been banned from duty on November 28, 2018 following a theft case at Camp Diable. He had returned to duty on December 19, 2022. He had since been assigned to the Special Supporting Unit and had been attached to the Divisional Supporting Unit in the Central Division since March 1, 2023. Azfar Heematally has thirteen years of service in the police force.
The suspect will be arraigned again in Souillac court on Monday morning, April 17.
