Two injured: Motorway police fire on bus

Claim bus was carrying smuggled goods, local police say no such item recovered

ISLAMABAD: At least two people were injured after the Motorway police chased and then opened fire on a passenger bus near the Islamabad Motorway Toll Plaza on Wednesday afternoon with the dramatic scenes caught on camera by a motorist following the incident.

Police said that the bus (LES-18-09), was heading to the capital from Peshawar. Officials of the National Highway and the Motorway Police (NHMP) suspected that the bus was carrying smuggled and non-custom paid goods and signalled it to pull over for an inspection.

Instead, officials claimed, the bus sped away.

A video of the incident captured by an unidentified motorist who was travelling behind the bus at the time, shows a motorway police patrol car chasing the large, silver-coloured bus down the Islamabad Highway.



The video shot by a motorist clearly shows the bus driver blocking the police car when the latter tried to overtake it.

At one point, the patrol car managed to overtake the bus and blocked its path in an attempt to force it to stop. But as the bus looked to exit the motorway, gunshots rang out, with officers of the motorway police allegedly opening fire at the bus.

The bus, though, exited the motorway. However, it stopped after travelling a few hundred metres. The officers had apparently shot through the bus’ fuel tank, causing it to leak diesel.

As the motorway police officers caught up with the motionless bus a few moments later, multiple people exited it, with one bathed in blood and bleeding profusely, apparently having received some of the bullets fired by the police officers.

A spokesperson for the Motorway Police told The Express Tribune that they had been alerted by the customs authorities in Peshawar that the specific bus was apparently carrying smuggled goods



He added that when motorway police officer tried to stop the bus and search it at the toll plaza, its staff misbehaved with them.

The spokesperson confirmed that a patrol car chased the bus while blowing their hooter and motioning for the bus to pull over. But as the driver tried to speed away, the official said, chasing officers opened fire at the bus.

Meanwhile, a senior Rawalpindi police officer said that the bus had been stopped at the toll plaza where the conductor showed the requisite documents to the policemen but then the driver sped away, after which a Motorway police patrol chased them.

Patrol officers SI Shahid Gul and SI Aitezaz apparently then shot at the bus injuring at least two passengers including Gulfraz Khan and Abdur Rehman.

Gulfraz was subsequently shifted to the DHQ Hospital in Rawalpindi while Rehman was admitted to the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims) in Islamabad with serious injuries to his head and face. Soon afterwards, an attempted murder case was also registered against the two officers at the Nasirabad police station on the complaint of the injured passenger.

In his complaint, the injured passenger claimed that both the officers had fled the scene after they discovered that their actions had injured people.

However, the motorway police spokesperson refuted this and insisted that the officers did not flee. Rather, he claimed, they shifted the injured to a nearby hospital and later to Pims for treatment.

The motorway police spokesperson further claimed that per the two officers, they only shot in retaliation after being shot at from inside the bus.

However, the Rawalpindi police, who have taken the bus into their custody, said that neither did they find any smuggled or non-customs paid goods on the bus nor was there any evidence of firing from inside the bus.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 31^st, 2018.