Peshawar incident: 9 policemen suspended for killing innocent man

Gul Nabi was shot after police claimed he was an armed LeI ‘militant’; investigations indicate otherwise.

PESHAWAR:

In what appears to be a serious case of abuse of authority, nine officials of the Sarband police station were suspended following a preliminary investigation which indicates that a man, labelled as a militant and killed by the police, was known to be innocent.

Dr Mian Saeed Ahmed, Superintendent of Police Cantonment Circle, told The Express Tribune that the city police chief has suspended the personnel, including a sub-inspector, over the killing when the inquiry showed that the circumstances of the killing were suspicious and the facts did not correspond with what the officials involved were claiming.

A further inquiry into the incident would be conducted, he said. Family members of the slain tribesman accused the officials of acting as hired assassins and alleged that they were paid to carry out the murder by their enemies.

Saeed did not disclose the exact nature of the charges against the cops, only saying that the Peshawar Senior Superintendent of Police would now lead the inquiry.

Conflicting accounts

The incident took place on Friday, when police claimed that armed militants belonging to the Bara-based outfit Lashkar-e-Islam (LeI) had stormed a check-post in the Sarband area, near the Bara tehsil of the Khyber agency. One of these ‘militants’ was later identified as Gul Nabi, killed in an encounter and discovered to have weapons and ammunition on him.

However, Nabi’s brother Ahmed Noor told The Express Tribune that his brother had gone to offer his Friday prayers at Jalat Khan Mosque in Bara Bazaar and when he came out of the mosque, a police party headed by Sub-Inspector Bukhar Ali Shah along with plainclothes officials were in wait for him.

“They took away my brother to the check-post and shot him dead in cold blood within an hour of his arrest,” Noor said. He said that while the police later claimed that he was carrying weapons, Nabi was in fact unarmed when he was arrested.

Possible motive

He alleged that enemies of the family (which is involved in a land dispute with other residents of their village) paid the police who acted in the capacity of hired killers. Nabi was previously implicated in a murder case by the police as well, he said, indicating an agenda.  Noor demanded that police and government officials take notice of the incident and award punishment to the perpetrators of the crime.

Gul Nabi, aged 35, was a shopkeeper and the father of seven children who had nothing to do with militants, Noor said.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 18^th, 2011.