PTI leader accuses cops of covering up ‘extrajudicial killings’

Claims she is receiving 'threats and offers' in connection with Gizri encounter that left five dead

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf leader Laila Parveen and her husband Hasnain accused the police on Saturday of erasing evidence of the "extrajudicial killings" of five men, including their driver, Abbas.

Parveen further claimed that she had been receiving "threats and offers" on phone by sources she did not name.

Her allegations build on those she made the previous day, after the Gizri police claimed to have shot dead five robbers from the 'Saraiki Gang,' during an encounter in Defence Housing Authority (DHA) on Friday morning.

Parveen had claimed the encounter was staged, adding that one of the slain suspects, her driver Abbas, was arrested from her house before the incident.

Talking to the media on Saturday, she claimed her neighbour informed her that the police had reached her house around 4am while she was in Islamabad and took Hasnain's mother and sister to an unknown location. She said she was only able to contact her mother-in-law 15 hours after the incident.

According to her, the police forced Abbas to drive their car, a Vigo, on the street outside her house. "My neighbours saw him maneuvering the car from one end of the street to the other," she said. "The police then took Abbas to the back alley and shot him along with four others," she alleged.

Saying that Abbas had recently returned to work after a nine-month leave, Parveen questioned why he hadn't been caught earlier if he was a robber.

She further accused the police of destroying CCTV footage captured by the camera outside her house. "They are trying to prove that the fake encounter was real," she said. "But they haven't been able to provide any evidence [of the men being robbers]."

Meanwhile, Hasnain said the police had changed their statement thrice. "First they claimed the 'robbers' broke into the house and held the family hostage, then they said they opened fire at the vehicle when the driver didn't stop after being flagged down and then they said they shot the men during an encounter inside the house after the latter went in leaving the car behind," he said.

What is significant is that the police destroyed footage from CCTV cameras in the street to "cover up their crime," Hasnain alleged. "Why would they destroy it?" he questioned, maintaining that Abbas had no criminal record. "And there are courts where the suspects could have been presented instead of the police committing extrajudicial killings," he added.

He claimed no bloodstains or bullet shells were found to prove the encounter and neither were there any eyewitnesses.

Saying the family would file an FIR against the "extrajudicial killing" at Gizri police station, he added they would approach the courts if the police refused to register it.

'Criminal record'

The police, though, maintain the slain men were "habitual criminals and intended to occupy the bungalow where they were killed."

Besides, they said, a 9mm pistol found in the possession of one of the suspects, Muhammad Abid, was snatched during a robbery in 2013.

They said they had been corresponding with an intelligence agency and had received information that Abbas was employed at a bungalow, which the police kept under surveillance in the belief that the suspects either resided there or intended to loot it.

The Gizri police have registered six cases on the state's behalf, with the first case registered for attempted murder and police encounter.

According to the FIR, four of the suspects had told the police their names before dying, while the fifth was not in a condition to speak.

The remaining five cases have been registered against each of the slain suspects for the possession of illegal weapons.

As per the FIR, the suspects had been committing criminal offences over the last eight years.

Meanwhile, the last unidentified suspect was identified as Muhammad Usman, who is reportedly booked in multiple cases in Punjab.

The bodies of four suspects were handed over to the families, while Abbas' body remained unclaimed until the filing of this report.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 29^th, 2020.