MULTAN, May 23: The father of one of the two alleged outlaws killed by the Sadiqabad police in a ‘shootout’ on May 18 has accused a defunct militant organisation of “hatching the conspiracy to eliminate his son.”

Talking to Dawn on Tuesday, Rana Talib Hussain said that his elder son Tahir Nadeem alias ‘Ghazi Baba’ was a belligerent ‘jehadi” who was killed in a skirmish in the Indian-held Kashmir on Aug 30, 2003, while being part of Jaish-i-Muhammad.

He said his other son Shahzad alias Tipu had also received militant training in a camp in Afghanistan run by Maulana Khalid. However, the event unfolding after the ‘martyrdom’ of Ghazi Baba compelled Tipu to leave ‘jihad’ and return to Pakistan to start a fresh life. He said since then Tipu had been working in a factory in Faisalabad.

Tipu and Naveed Anjum were killed in what Sadiqabad ( Rahim Yar Khan district) police claimed a shootout that took place in the precincts of Ahmedpur Lama police station. The police had arrested two other ‘accomplices’ of Tipu namely Rana Asif and Sabir.

The police said that Tipu and his accomplices had sped away in their car when they were signalled by a police party headed by ASP Pir Muhammad Shah at a toll plaza. The police started chasing them and a shootout ensued when the people riding the car opened fire. Asif and Sabir have so far not given in to the police version as they claim that Tipu and Naveed were killed in cold blood

Rana Talib said that a few days after the demise of his son Ghazi Baba, the JM people came to him in Sadiqabad along with a young woman and a four-year-old girl and introduced them as Baba’s widow Sadia and daughter Fatima. “I was happy to see them as their entry in my life lessened to some extent the grief of Baba’s absence,” he added.

After a few months Sadia was married to another man namely Saifullah of the Hattian Bala area of Mansehra district in NWFP. He said her new spouse was also said to be a prominent ‘jehadi’. Fatima, however, remained with her grandparents in Sadiqabad.

Later, the JM people started pressing Talib’s family to hand over Fatima to her mother and at last they succeeded in ‘abducting’ her. “This episode annoyed Tipu who left the JM,” Rana Talib said.

He said he did not know what other reasons were behind his parting of ways with JM but there could be some other factors as well besides Fatima’s abduction. He said a day before Tipu’s death someone called him by phone and introduced himself as ‘Maulana Khalid’ from Karachi and warned that his son would be killed if he did not change his behaviour.

Rana Talib demanded a judicial probe not less than by a high court judge into what he termed murder of his son and his friend in cold blood. The Rahim Yar Khan police however denied that it was a staged encounter. The SP (investigation) Rao Saleem said though Ghazi Baba was a known militant and everyone here knew that he was ‘martyred’ in Kashmir, it was yet to be established that Tipu was also the part of any militant organisation. He said Tipu was wanted by the Faisalabad police in a number of murder and kidnapping for ransom cases.

The encounter had sparked protests in Sadiqabad and Rahim Yar Khan. In a bid to pacify people, MNA Raees Muneer had reportedly held a meeting with trade leaders and lawyers and formed a five-member committee to meet the Punjab chief minister to urge him to suspend ASP Pir Mohammad and lodge a murder case against him besides asking him to order a judicial probe into the killing.

The committee comprises Raees Muneer, Sadiqabad tehsil nazim Taloot Bajwa, former provincial minister Shaukat Daud, Riaz Cheema and Hafiz Abdul Razzaq.