Police officers penalised for giving wrong information

SHO claims that the people at the scene told him that two robbers had been killed in an encounter.

KARACHI: In an attempt to take credit, police officers told the media that two alleged robbers had been killed in an encounter. The trouble is, the robbers turned out to be innocent butchers and the encounter turned out to be fake, which resulted in the police officers being penalised.

Two young men, identified as Naeem Muqeem and Adnan Ghulam Mohammad, were gunned down in Block I, North Nazimabad on November 1. SHO Raja Tariq and SP Latif Siddiqui told the media shortly after the killings that both men were robbers and were shot dead in a police encounter.

This information, however, turned out to be false as their friend, Mohammad Asif, who was allegedly with them when the incident took place, said that they were both butchers and were killed in a targeted attack. He said that he had accompanied them to North Nazimabad to collect money for animals they had slaughtered on Eidul Azha. “Two armed men riding on a motorcycle shot at Naeem and Adnan while they were waiting outside the customers’ house,” said Asif. He added that they fired at him too, but he escaped to a nearby wedding hall. After the incident, family and friends of the deceased reached Abbasi Shaheed Hospital to protest. The mob also entered the Shara-e-Noor Jahan police station and caused damage to the property.

Upon the family’s insistence that the police had misinformed the media, IG Sindh Fayyaz Leghari took notice of the incident and suspended SHO Tariq on Friday and also asked SP Siddiqui to report to Central Police Office and relieved him of his charge. DSP Mushtaq Tanoli was also suspended.

“When we arrived on the scene, the people who had gathered said that two robbers had been shot dead in an encounter,” said Tariq. He added that there were guns next to the bodies and that they assumed that the encounter must have taken place. “When Asif told us of what had occurred, we immediately retracted what we said and told the truth.”

An FIR has been registered by the police against the unidentified assailants.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 3^rd, 2012.