Robbery suspect: Police shoot university student

Cops claim they were shot at first; eyewitnesses deny, get arrested while talking to media.

RAWALPINDI:

Policemen in Sadiqabad shot a university student who they mistook for a robber on Thursday night. The student sustained injuries as a result.

While the police claimed the students fired at the police first, eyewitnesses and students of Arid Agriculture University (AAU) have a different story to tell.

AAU students Naeem Sultan and Rana Bilal spoke to The Express Tribune at Benazir Bhutto Hospital (BBH), saying that after class, their friends Mavia Hafeez, Naveed Ahsan and Numan Farooq went off to a nearby restaurant.

However, soon after they got off the campus, police officials opened unprovoked fire at them, injuring Farooq. Hafeez and Ahsan rushed him to BBH for treatment.

Meanwhile, the Sadiqabad police also rushed to the hospital and picked up Hafeez and Ahsan, saying the students had opened fire on police personnel.

The Sadiqabad station house officer claimed there was an encounter between police and robbers that left one robber injured, while the two accomplices fled the scene.

On the other hand, hospital sources said that the injured student was brought to hospital by Hafeez and Ahsan and the police picked them up from the hospital. Sultan and Bilal were speaking with The Express Tribune at BBH when police officials came back and picked them up as well.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 17^th, 2014.