Police accused of ‘staging’ encounters

Cops remain unscathed as four suspects injured in separate shootouts

HYDRABAD:

With the crimes like robberies and vehicle snatching becoming rampant again in Hyderabad, the district's police seem to have resorted to the extrajudicial punishments in the form of stagy encounters. Four suspects were injured with gunshots in three separate encounters late on Sunday night.

Luckily, neither any cop was injured during the police claimed exchange of fire in all those encounters nor any damage to their vehicles was even reported. The first incident took place on Khatian link road where Tandojam police arrested Waqar Sipio in injured condition.

Sipio's accomplices, who were riding with him on the same motorbike, escaped. The police shifted the injured suspect to Liaquat University Hospital for medical treatment. He has been booked in two new FIRs while the spokesman claimed that Sipio is already wanted in around 19 cases of robberies, snatching, encounters and drug peddling.

Separately, two more suspects were arrested in an identical way with gunshot injuries sustained during an encounter which occurred near Meeran Shah high school. The Market police claimed that four suspects riding on two motorbikes exchanged fire with the police who were patrolling in that locality.

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Muhammad Rizwan Jutt and Abid Ali Arain were arrested and shifted to LUH for surgeries of their bullet injuries but two other suspects accompanying them made their escape good. The spokesman claimed that Jutt and Arain were also charged in at least nine FIRs of various crimes.

The fourth suspect, Hidayatulla, was rounded up with a bullet injury to his leg at an encounter along an embankment of the river Indus in Hussainabad area. The Hussainabad police claimed that two suspected outlaws, the second of whom identified as Dil Jan Jamali was also apprehended, riding a motorbike engaged them in an exchange of fire during their patrolling.

The spokesman claimed that a stolen motorbike and a pistol were recovered from their possession. They later allegedly handed over four more stolen motorbikes and a rickshaw to the police.

Both are said to be involved in various criminal offences like robberies, snatching, possessing unlicensed weapons and the police encounters. The spokesman told that they hail from Balochistan.

 

Published in The Express Tribune, February 1^st, 2022.