Night out turns deadly for biker boy

A 22-year-old boy was killed in the wee hours of Sunday near a police check point in sector I-10. Asghar Ali, a resident of Sadiqabad Rawalpindi was shot dead after crossing the checkpoint on a motorbike with his friends. Police said the boy was killed by the bullet fired by his own friends, who were allegedly firing in the air in different areas of the city earlier.

However, the relatives of the boy accused the police of killing him, claiming that the police personnel standing guard at the check post located on the southern service road in front of Al-Khalid hospital shot him after he refused to stop. The relatives of the boy protested against the “police action” by blocking the road with the coffin of the boy in front of Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences. “They (police) killed my boy. He was shot with the semi-machine gun and received three bullets” said Fazal Khan, father of Asghar Ali.

The Sabzi Mandi Police however, rejected these accusations. “The boy was killed with the bullets fired by his own friends,” said the investigation officer Muhammad Azhar. He said a group of ten to twelve youngsters were roaming around on their motorbikes, firing in the air.  They crossed the checkpost at around 3:30 am and were not stopped by the police, he added. “After they crossed the picket, some of them again resorted to aerial firing during which a bullet hit Asghar Ali and killed him on the spot,” Azhar said.

The post mortem report of the boy also suggested that he received only one bullet. “The exit wound was on the right side back of his head just above the right ear,” the doctor who carried out the post mortem told . The wound showed that the boy was shot from the front.

All the concerned senior police officials had turned their phones off and could not be contacted for further details.

The relatives of the boy had not moved any application against police or any other suspect. Later, the Federal Interior Minister Rehman Malik ordered a magisterial inquiry into the incident to ascertain the facts.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 21^st, 2010.