Fatal encounter: Proclaimed offender killed ‘in shootout’

A witness says the suspect was brought to the scene in a police van and killed.

FAISALABAD:

A proclaimed offender was shot and killed on Wednesday night in, what the police called, a shootout at Commerce College on Jaranwala Road.

A witness, who requested not to be identified, told The Express Tribune that the deceased, identified as Muhammad Saleem alias Mitho, was brought to the spot and killed in a fake encounter.

He said traffic was suspended on the road when the incident took place.

Crime Investigation Agency Superintendent of Police (SP) Rae Zameerul Haq, however, told the media on Thursday that Saleem, a resident of Kot Khan Muhammad, was killed in a shootout. He said a police team had chased the suspect and his accomplice, riding a motorcycle, from a picket on Jaranwala Road to the Commerce College.

“The suspects entered the college building and opened fire at the police.

The police returned the fire and killed one of them who was later identified as Saleem,” said Peoples Colony Station House Officer Rana Atif, who was part of the team.

He said several warnings were issued to the suspects to surrender to the police but they refused to do so.

The SHO said Saleem’s accomplice managed to escape. He said police had set up a picket on Jaranwala Road after they were tipped off about the presence of the deceased in the area. “The police had tried to stop them at the picket but they drove away,” he said.

SP Haq said the deceased carried a bounty of Rs500,000 and was wanted in several robberies and murders, including the killing of a jail warden during a robbery involving a borstal jail van on July 3. Seven people were injured in the incident. Five of them were jail officials and two passers by.

He said the jail staff was robbed of Rs2 million near Koh-i-Noor Chowk on Jaranwala Road (close to the spot where the proclaimed offender was killed on Wednesday night). The money had been drawn from a bank to pay the salaries of borstal jail staff.

He said Saleem’s involvement in the robbery was established by sketches of the four robbers drawn using witnesses’ accounts.

The SP said the police had seized two 0.30-bore pistols, about a dozen bullets, Rs1,100 and the motorcycle the suspects were using.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 20^th, 2012.