PPP leaders demand Rasheed’s resignation over youth’s killing

Anti-Terrorist Squad personnel shot dead 22-year-old Osama Satti in Islamabad on Tuesday

KARACHI:

Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) senator Aajiz Dhamrah and other leaders of the party issued a joint statement on Sunday, condemning the killing of a 22-year-old youth, Osama Satti, by Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) personnel in the G-10 area of Islamabad the previous day and demanding Interior Minister Shaikh Rasheed's resignation.

The PPP leaders decried that extrajudicial killings have become a norm in Punjab, adding that had justice been served in the Sahiwal killings case - another instance where a couple, their teenage daughter and their neighbour were killed by counter-terrorism department officials - Osama would have been alive today.

"Islamabad has been seeing bloodshed since the day Shaikh Rasheed assumed the role of the interior minister," they claimed. "Rasheed's links with extremist groups is an open secret," they alleged.

They claimed that nobody was holding persons involved in terrorist activities in Islamabad accountable, but the police went on to kill a youth for not pulling over when they flagged him and no one was bothered.

Slamming the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf for performing poorly on all fronts, they further criticised it for appointing Rasheed as the interior minister.

"They have handed over the Ministry of Interior in the hands of a person who had fled the country when the nation was going through a challenging time," the PPP leaders remarked. "Shaikh Rasheed has wrecked the Ministry of Railways and Ministry of Information, and now it seems that is the Ministry of Interior's turn."

Holding Prime Minister Imran Khan responsible for Osama's killing, they demanded Rasheed's resignation.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 4^th, 2021.