RAWALPINDI, Nov 27: City police arrested two Anti-Narcotics Force (ANF) personnel who were allegedly fleeing the scene after their firing on a suspect van killed two passengers on the Motorway near Tarnol on Sunday.

Police said ANF sub-inspector Mohammad Munir and constable Mohammad Qasim were caught in Saddar Bairooni Police Station area after a brief chase but the man driving their official vehicle (RIG-1115), Sajid Mehmood, escaped.

Driver of the ill-fated passenger van (LES-5738), Mohammad Baz Khan, alleged that ANF patrolmen standing near Thalian Bridge on the Tarnol section of the Motorway signalled him to stop but opened fire before he could bring his van travelling at high speed to a stop.

“I was reducing the speed and flashing the indicator to stop by the roadside when the ANF officers opened fire on my wagon from their car. I heard one passenger shrieking,” he said, referring to passenger Fazl-i-Amin, a cloth merchant, who died instantly.

As the van came to a halt, the driver said his son and helper, Asad Khan, got out shouting at the hurtling ANF shooters what they had done.

But according to the father his 18-year-old son had hardly disembarked when the ANF men shot at him too, critically injuring him. He died on way to the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims).

Preliminary postmortem report of the two victims said the bullets fired hit Fazl-i-Amin in the ribs. Asad was hit by four bullets –three from the backside entered his chest and one his neck.

Wagon driver Baz Khan said in his statement to police that he and his son, who worked with him as conductor, were taking passengers from their native town Mardan to Lahore when the gruesome incident occurred.

On seeing that their shooting had killed one man while a second was gasping for life, the ANF officers fled the scene, he added.

Police were alerted. They gave chase to the fleeing men for about seven kilometres and caught up with them in Saddar Bairooni area as they had existed the Motorway in their attempt to escape.

City Police Officer Azhar Hameed Khokhar confirmed their arrest on murder charges. ANF officials were not available for comments despite repeated attempts. No contraband item or narcotics were found in the suspected van.

“Perhaps, the ANF personnel had wrong information about smuggling of narcotics,” said the CPO.

The violent deaths of two persons disturbed the wagon drivers travelling on the motorway. They wanted to block the traffic on the Islamabad-Lahore Motorway but were persuaded by Rawalpindi police not to.