Trigger happy? Police shoot, kill man for failing to stop at checkpoint

Culprits still at large; SHO suspended as victim’s family stages protest on IJP road

ISLAMABAD: A young man was shot dead in the capital early on Friday morning after police claimed he failed to stop his car at a check post in Sector I-10/1.

The police are currently looking for the two officials who were manning the checkpost and shot at the car. The area SHO has been suspended.

According to the police, Taimur Riaz was travelling with a woman in his Toyota Corolla - IDL-4724 - early on Friday morning. Two policemen, coonstables Samiullah Niazi and Tariq, were manning the checkpost near the CDA Stop on IJP Road and flagged them to stop.

Taimur reportedly failed to comply and crossed the post without slowing down, upon which constable Niazi shot at the car.

“[Constable Niazi] fired three bullets, one of which [went through the rear window and] hit Taimur in the back of the head. He died on the spot,” read an application submitted by the victim’s family to the police.

While what happened immediately afterwards is unclear, a second police party arrived at the scene and took the girl into custody and shifted Taimur’s body to the nearest public hospital, Holy Family Hospital in Rawalpindi, for autopsy. The car, with Taimur’s blood splattered over the interior, has been shifted to Sabzi Mandi Police Station.

Police officials later said that the 26-year-old deceased was a resident of Rawalpindi, while the woman* accompanying him was from Lahore.

“She was a call girl from Lahore,” a police officer claimed when asked by the The Express Tribune. Another official, however, partially refuted this, saying that Taimur was married and that the girl with him in the car was his girlfriend.

He claimed that the girl was drunk at the time of the incident. “We are waiting for medical reports to confirm this,” he said, adding that the girl is still in police custody.

Meanwhile, a murder case was registered against Niazi and Tariq. The two officials, however, are on the run and the police claimed they are conducting raids to locate and arrest their brothers in blue.

Sabzi Mandi SHO Saleem Shah, who had been appointed to the post just a few days back, stands suspended.

Protests

Taimur’s relatives staged a protest at the checkpost on IJP Road by placing the young mans’ body on the road and demanding the immediate arrest of the culprits.

The protest saw the IJP Road blocked for several hours on Friday afternoon.

The protest was called off after police officers assured Riaz’s family that the two police officials involved would be apprehended as soon as possible. “We ended our protest after assurance that the culprits would be nabbed in 24 hours,” said Riaz’s brother.

Hours after filing the application with the police over the incident, the victim’s brother Sajid Riaz disputed the earlier police claims that the car had been flagged to stop.

Speaking to The Express Tribune, Sajid said that girl accompanying Taimur had told them that officials at the checkpoint had not expressly signalled for them to pull over, and only rather “casually” pointed a flashlight at the car.

He added that Taimur was a car salesman.

His funeral prayers were scheduled to be held at 10pm on Friday in Rawalpindi’s Bangash Colony. He would then be buried at the Pirwadhai graveyard.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 4^th, 2017.