Shootout or murder: Police accused of killing man in staged encounter

‘They killed my son when I couldn’t pay the bribe they asked for’.

LAHORE:

An additional district and sessions judge on Saturday sought comments from the Kotwali CIA Inspector on a petition seeking the registration of a case against three police officials accused of killing the petitioner’s son in a staged police encounter after he failed to pay a bribe for his release.

Petitioner Noor Rehman said the police had killed his son and quashed the abduction FIR he had filed against unidentified people when his son Faizur Rehman Khan had gone missing a few weeks back. “When I found out that he was with the Kotwali CIA police, I went there and found out that he was in the lockup.”

Rehman has accused Inspector Iftikhar Rasool Bajwa, Sub Inspector Nadeem, Personal Staff Officer of the CIA SP, Umar Virk, and SI Riasat Ali of demanding a Rs2,500,000 bribe for his release. He said that he told them that he would sell his house and pay the bribe in a few days.

He said that when he had trouble arranging for the money, he requested the police to lower the amount of the bribe but they refused. Rehman said they killed his son in a staged encounter even though he was innocent.

He said the police officials forcibly obtained a written statement from his son stating that the CIA police had arrested him after the registration of the abduction FIR. The FIR was quashed on the basis of that statement, he said.

Rehman requested the court to direct the station house officer to register an FIR against the police officials for demanding a bribe, quashing the abduction FIR using a false statement and killing his son in a fake encounter.

Inspector Iftikhar Rasool Bajwa told The Express Tribune that the allegations against them were false. He said Faiz Khan had been involved in seven cases of abduction for ransom.

He said Khan had told them that he could lead them to the rest of his accomplices. He said they took Khan with them when they raided his accomplices’ hideout. His accomplices shot at the police and Khan was killed in the shootout. He said they had neither killed Faiz in an encounter nor demanded a bribe for his release.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 15^th, 2014.