PESHAWAR, July 8: The station house officer (SHO) of Bhana Mari Police Station, who was accused of killing a 17-year-old boy in a fake encounter, has been transferred to Crime Investigation Agency (CIA). The police department took the step to subside the public anger against the SHO, official sources said.

“It is a strange move as District Nazim Azam Afridi had earlier requested Chief of Capital City Police DIG Khurshid Alam Khan to sack SHO Abdul Malik Khan and initiate an inquiry into the alleged killing the teenager Kashmir Khan in fake police encounter,” citizens reacting to the action said here on Monday.

Following the District Nazim’s request, the DIG issued an order a week ago, for transferring SHO Abdul Malik to police line. But the SHO refused to accept the order. “He has close links with the high police officials and that is why the inquiry was not initiated,” the citizens said.

“We don’t want to demoralize the police by taking action against the police official,” the DIG remarked when asked by the newsmen about the SHO’s involvement in fake encounter during a press conference at Bhana Mari Police Station on Sunday.

Bhana Mari police had killed Kashmir Khan about two months ago in an ‘encounter’ in Qazi Javed Quarters area of Sikandar Khan Ghari. The police claimed that they were in routine patrol when people of the locality informed them about the presence of five burglars in the house of Sardar Wali.

They claimed that the burglars opened fire at them which was retaliated and during the shootout killed Kashmir Khan.

But his father Misal Khan, who is working as ward orderly in Khyber Teaching Hospital, accused the police of killing his son in fake encounter as in the FIR the police mentioned the name of Kaseem Wardag, a notorious burglar, intentionally to hide their crime.

His father blamed that after staging the ‘encounter’ in which Kashmir Khan was fired upon several bullets, but he survived. Later on, the injured Kashmir Khan was put in the police van and drove him for two hours till he died, the father alleged.

“No, it was a genuine police encounter as he was killed during the burglary attempt,” Abdul Malik Khan told Dawn on telephone and insisted that there were still marks of wounds on the ears of female inmates of the burgled house from whom Kashmir Khan snatched the gold ear-rings.

On a question about registering the name of Kaseem Wardag in the FIR, he said, “when the police asked his name before his death, Kashmir Khan did not pronounce his name properly and we heard that he was saying Kaseem.”