A case of blown cover?: Alleged police informant killed by TTP in Manghopir

According to the official account, Sher Alam was killed over financial misappropriation.

KARACHI: An alleged police informant was killed by the outlawed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan in Manghopir in the late hours of Sunday.

Sher Alam aka Shera, 48, was killed outside his house in Kunwari Colony. Talking to The Express Tribune, Pirabad SHO Abdul Moeed said that the deceased was the area naib-commander and finance secretary of the outlawed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, besides being responsible for holding jirgas. Moeed said that Alam was reportedly killed by his companions over financial misappropriation. “He was accused of not transferring the full extortion amount to Waziristan.”

The SHO said that TTP men picked Alam from his home on Saturday and took him to an undisclosed location. “They held a jirga over the matter and upon finding him guilty they brought him back to his house and shot him at least five times.”

Moeed further said that the deceased was not directly nominated in any of the cases but he was wanted by the police in more than a dozen cases of killing law enforcers. Further investigation against him was under way, he added. The victim’s body was taken to the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital for postmortem, following which it was handed over to his family for burial.

A police source, however, said that the deceased had served as a middleman between the police and Taliban settled in Manghopir and its surrounding areas, adding that he was apparently killed over suspicions of being a police informant.

“His death is a loss of the police department as he had assisted the police in several raids,” said the source. “He was doing a very risky job and had agreed to work with only reliable officers. I knew he would be killed if his companions found out about him.”

Published in The Express Tribune, June 17^th, 2013.