Clearing encroachments: Additional home secretary, 7 SHOs booked in murder case

Sacchal SHO says men, for whose murder policemen were implicated, died when they were shot at by their companions.

KARACHI:

Additional home secretary and former Capital City Police Officer Karachi Waseem Ahmed was among eleven policemen who were booked in a dual murder case on Tuesday. They had been accused of attacking a camp of flood survivors in the Sacchal area of Gulshan-e-Iqbal in 2010.

Ghulam Jaffer had lodged FIR No. 635/12 at Sacchal police station, and claimed that the police officers were involved in attacking the camp in Sacchal that left two people dead and several others injured.

Former Gulshan-e-Iqbal Town SP Abdullah Shaikh, three DSPs, Agha Jameel, Junaid Khan and Iqbal Amin, seven SHOs, including Dost Mohammad, Asif Munawar, Lal Buksh, Safdar Mashwani, Tariq Imran and Imtiaz, and four constructive builders were also nominated in the FIR.

Sacchal SHO Azhar Iqbal told The Express Tribune that they registered the case on the orders of the apex court. He added that this was a counter FIR, as the original FIR had already been registered at the Sacchal police station. He also claimed that the policemen who were nominated on Tuesday were innocent, and those who were living in the relief camp were actually “land grabbers”. The men died when they were fired on by their companions, and police reached the area and cleared the area.

Former Gulshan-e-Iqbal SHO Asif Munawar, who was also nominated in the FIR, claims that he was also injured during the incident. “I was part of the additional police force that was called to control the situation. I was the first person to get injured that day,” he claimed. Munawar also supported Iqbal’s assertion that the incident was caused by fighting between residents of the area, who had encroached upon the land.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 24^th, 2012.