Sweeping justice: Supreme Court orders screening of officers involved in fake encounters

Order comes in case of student, allegedly labelled terrorist and killed in encounter in June 2014.

KARACHI: The Supreme Court (SC) has ordered the Sindh IG to screen officers suspected of being involved in criminal activities and to take disciplinary action against them.

A two-member bench, comprising justices Amir Hani Muslim and Maqbool Baqar, also ordered him to direct all the SSPs to ensure character rolls of all the officers are maintained at district level. IG is also directed to submit a compliance report in court.

These directives came during the hearing of case on the death of a class-10 student, who was allegedly labelled a ‘terrorist’ before he was killed in a ‘fake’ encounter in June, 2014.

Former Sacchal SHO Ismail Lashari approached the apex court challenging the order of the Sindh High Court (SHC), which had ordered the registration of an FIR against him regarding the killing of 17-year-old Anisur Rehman Soomro. The family had claimed that Lashari had demanded Rs500,000 as bribe for the release of Anis and killed him in a staged encounter by labelling him a terrorist after they failed to pay the amount.



During Friday’s proceedings, Sindh IG Ghulam Qadir Jamali was nearly raked over coals over his failure to act against the officers who are involved in criminal activities. At the outset, the judges inquired what action was initiated against two former SHOs, Ismail Lashari and Shoaib Siddiqui, who were still enjoying field postings despite having criminal records.

IG Jamali said action was initiated against any officer found involved in criminal activities and now, only those officials having good reputation, will be appointed as SHOs purely on merit.

The bench members observed there were some black sheep who had ruined the entire police department. They need to be identified and taken to task, the Judges said.

IG Jamali replied that the service record of 75,000 policemen had been computerised to check their performance.

Meanwhile, Malir SSP Rao Anwar submitted his reply through Advocate Abid S Zuberi.

The apex court also appointed district South sessions judge Ahmed Saba to probe into the allegations made by the complainant against SSP Anwar and two SHOs and submit a report within a month. SSP Anwar and the complainant are directed appear before the DJ Saba to record their statements on March 3. The judges said if any harm is caused to the complainant or his family SSP Anwar would be held responsible. The court also ordered withdrawing investigation from the investigation officer of the Sachal police and appointed East SSP Pir Muhammad Shah to supervise the investigation of this case and submit a charge-sheet against the suspects to the concerned court according to law.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 28^th, 2015.