Urmar Payan incident: Three policemen die in Peshawar shootout

Law enforcers were attacked by unidentified persons

PESHAWAR: Three police constables were killed while six were injured in exchange of fire with gunmen in Urmar Payan on the outskirt of Peshawar on Wednesday.

Although police claim that unidentified persons attacked a police party during a combing operation, people in Urmar Payan maintain that enraged villagers opened fire on the police for killing a youth in cold blood and staging it as an encounter.

A police party headed by SHO Ijaz Khan raided a house to arrest Aslam Khan who was wanted in a petty case of aerial firing and harassment under sections 506/107/148/149 of Pakistan Penal Code. However, Aslam was killed in what police claimed to be an encounter.

The incident enraged locals and when the police party was taking the body to local police station, dozens of villagers attacked killing three constables on the spot and injuring six others. The deceased included Rahmatullah, Romaan and Dost Mohammad.

A village elder of Urmar Payan told The Express Tribune that the youth had a fight with someone recently after which an FIR had been registered against him for aerial firing to harass his opponents and threatening them with dire consequences. “It is not a heinous crime. There was no need to open fire. He was a college student, not a hardened criminal,” he said, adding that police entered Aslam’s house and gunned him down “in cold blood.”

The villagers, interviewed by The Express Tribune said the local police head SHO Ijaz Khan was a very corrupt man and expressed suspicion that he might have taken money from Aslam’s opponents to kill the youth.

Legality of the raid

Meanwhile, sources said that SHO Sub Inspector Ijaz Khan, who headed the police party, was suspended from duty a day earlier by IG Nasir Khan Durrani on complaint of a resident of Badhaber, Mohammad Islam. The complainant claimed that Ijaz, during posting as in-charge of Bazid Khel police post in Badhaber, arrested him without any reason and released him after receiving Rs15,000 in bribe and on the assurance of an expensive mobile phone as a gift.

Sources said that the Peshawar police chief has ordered an inquiry to probe why did a suspended police officer carry out a raid and the allegation of extra-judicial killing of Aslam Khan who was wanted to police in a petty crime.

Police story

Police, however, claimed that it was a search and combing operation in the area during which the houses of all those wanted to police were raided and Aslam Khan was killed in exchange of fire with police.

They claimed that unidentified persons opened fire and in the ensuing exchange of fire three constables were killed, six policemen injured and a terrorist was also shot dead.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 3^rd,  2015.