Close encounters of an unpleasant kind

LAHORE: Two suspects, who had been in police custody for a while, were killed in a fake encounter as robbers who looted five people late on Saturday night in Shahdara Town escaped, The Express Tribune was told on Sunday.

The Shahdara police remain adamant, however, that the two men killed during the ‘encounter’ were the criminals who had robbed people that night. None of the police officials was even grazed by a bullet in the ‘hour-long crossfire’.

A police official in Shahdara Town police station, requesting anonymity, told the Tribune that the criminals who had shot and injured two citizens, after looting them, managed to escape well before the police got there. “The police party reached the crime scene half an hour after the incident and killed two suspects who were already in their custody,” the official said.

Shahdara Town SHO, Arshad Gujjar, who led the police party during the ‘encounter’, told the Tribune that the dead had not been identified by the police yet. However, he insisted that they had committed many crimes.

“Both were habitual criminals and were wanted by the police,” Gujjar said. He added that one of them was known to have killed his father some time ago.

The bodies of the victims are still lying in the morgue.

According to the police’s official version of the incident, about eight bandits were on a ‘looting spree’ late on Saturday night. They had blocked the road near Darbar Hasan Shah Wali, Dhair. They shot and injured Muhammad Arshad and his son Muhammad Imran when the two tried to resist the bandits. They are also understood to have looted three other people and taken Rs20,000 in cash and a mobile phone.

The police said that the bandits did not flee after injuring the father and son. “We reached the spot after learning about the incident,” said SHO Gujjar.

The SHO said that the bandits started shooting at the police as soon as they saw them. “To save ourselves and in retaliation, the police personnel returned fire,” he said, adding, “The crossfire continued for about one hour, during which we managed to kill two of the bandits while their accomplices succeeded in fleeing.”

SP City Faisal Gulzar, too, sought to dispel the ‘rumours’ of a fake encounter. He said that he had visited the crime scene himself. He said that there was no chance of the encounter being a fake one. “The bandits were forced to flee as a result of the timely police action, which secured the area,” Gulzar said.

He added that it had not been the intention of the police to kill the bandits but the police had to retaliate after the bandits started firing at them.

Advocate Muhammad Sharif Khokhar told The Express Tribune that the police’s version of encounter was ‘typical’. He said that during judicial inquiries, most of the encounters had proved fakes. “Police personnel frequently carry out such extra judicial killings after they have been bribed by enemies of the people that they kill,” Khokar said.

He added that the police had no authority to kill suspects, “The accused must be produced before a court of law for a trial and the court may decide the fate of the accused afterwards.”

Published in The Express Tribune, September 27^th, 2010.