KARACHI: Man dies in raid by plainclothes police: ASI killed in shootout
By Arman Sabir
KARACHI, May 4: A policeman and a man were killed in a shootout between suspected carjackers and police, some of them in civvies, in Gulistan-i-Jauhar on Friday morning.
Sources told Dawn that the gunfight was apparently caused by plainclothes policemen who were mistaken as armed robbers by the occupants of a house in Block 8 which was raided by a police party.
The surprise raid led to an exchange of fire between the suspects and the police resulting in the death of an assistant sub-inspector, Imam Deen, and an alleged carjacker, whose identity could not be established. A head constable was also wounded in the ‘encounter’, the police added.
“We have seized two cars, four pistols, five .22 rifles, a 12-bore rifle, an SMG, a repeater gun, and a shotgun. We have also picked up 20 people from the spot, including prime suspect Hasnain Raza alias Kashif, who was wanted in a number of cases,” the SP of ACLC told Dawn.
He said that the police had raided the house to arrest Kashif and his arrest was effected while the other people who had been picked up were being screened and if anyone was found involved in any criminal case, he would be arrested. Kashif, coming from Punjab, was involved in four criminal cases and had been released on bail.
However, the police sources claimed that the bungalow belonged to a well-known builder and the exchange of fire took place in utter confusion as some of the policemen in the raiding party were in civvies. As the policemen raided the bungalow, the occupants thought robbers had tried to enter it which prompted an exchange of fire. They said that a police party could not conduct a raid in civvies as per police rules.
The ACLC SP denied the allegation saying that there might be a few policemen in civvies but the raid was conducted by police officials in uniform.
Similarly, the sources said that one of the suspects, who suffered bullet wounds, kept writhing in agony for some time and could not shifted to hospital by the police, who waited for an ambulance.
The encounter took place at around 6am, while the post-mortem on the body of the dead was performed at around 3pm. The SP said: “The shifting of the body of the suspect to a hospital was delayed due to the late arrival of the ambulance.”
About the recovery of weapons and the cars, the SP of the ACLC said that the police were trying to verify if the weapons were unlicensed and the cars stolen.
The ACLC is a specialised cell but it could not verify whether the two cars were stolen or wanted in any criminal case despite the lapse of 13 hours, the sources said.
