Kharotabad incident : ‘Officials stole valuables from corpses’

Video footage shows police official separating chain from body and pocketing it in a dubious manner.

QUETTA:

The residents of Kharotabad have handed over another sensational video to media houses in which a police official is pocketing a valuable, presumably a gold chain or a necklace, recovered from a corpse.

The footage also shows personnel of the Frontier Corps (FC) and police officials opening indiscriminate firing on five Chechen suspects who were at that time lying injured near the FC picket.

The video shows a police official first separating the chain from the body and putting it in his pocket in a dubious manner. Despite the fact that suspects were injured and lying near the picket, the police and FC personnel were continuously shooting them.

“This shows that the professional investigators were not collecting evidence or searching the dead bodies,” said an official who is familiar with this profession.

The autopsy reports had already established three women and two men had died of bullet wounds. The report would be submitted to the authorities concerned by today.

Addressing a news conference at the Quetta Press Club, residents of Kharotabad said police had made illegal demands on the foreigners before carrying out the “fake encounter”.

The residents were flanked by Provincial Joint Secretary Tehrik-e-Insaaf Saifur Rehman.

“The Chechen nationals were unarmed and possessed no explosive material. They were carrying prayer books, shampoos and some cloths,” the residents said.

They have demanded that the responsible security personnel and police officials should be brought to justice through an impartial inquiry.

Interestingly, Quetta Police Chief Dawood Junejo had also been transferred and was made officer on special duty on the day of the incident. The acting Inspector General Ghalib Ali has taken additional charge of Capital City Police Officer.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 23^rd, 2011.