Kharotabad incident: I didn’t order fire, says Ex-CCPO Quetta

Former Quetta CCPO told the tribunal he tried to go close to the foreigners before FC personnel resorted to firing.

QUETTA:

Former Capital City Police Officer (CCPO) Dawood Junejo told a judicial tribunal on Monday that he did not pass the order to open fire at the five foreigners in the Kharotabad incident.

He added that he had, in fact,  stopped a policeman from shooting on the spot.

The judicial tribunal, appointed by the Balochistan government to investigate the killing of five foreigners in the Kharotabad area on May 17, resumed its hearing on Monday during which the former CCPO and other officials recorded their statements.

Junejo requested the tribunal to record his statement in an in-camera hearing. However, Justice Hashim Kakar, the head of the tribunal, declined his request and said there would be an open hearing because “we want people to see justice being delivered”.

Junejo said he was not there when the blast occurred, adding that he arrived there three or four minutes after it.

Frontier Corps (FC) Colonel Faisal Shehzad was already there, he added. “The firing started some 20 to 25 minutes later, but I did not order the police personnel to open fire. I stopped a policeman from firing at the foreigners. The FC personnel were continuously firing and I wanted to go closer to the foreigners, but the SP of the crime branch stopped me from doing so,” he told the tribunal.

Earlier, Civil Defence Officer Gul Mohammad stated that a parcel “containing 56 detonators” had been sent to him from the crime scene. “After inspecting it, I re-sealed it and sent it back to the officials concerned,” he said.

Investigation Officer Ilyas told the tribunal that blood samples of the foreigners had been dispatched to Peshawar and Islamabad for a DNA test.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 7^th, 2011.