KARACHI: Police killed four suspects in an encounter in the Dalmia area on Sunday night, Aziz Bhatti police said.

Acting on a tip-off about the presence of alleged gangsters linked with the Lyari gang warfare, contingents of police encircled the spot, where the police came under attack. The police returned fire, killing the four suspects, claimed Gulshan SP Dr Fahad Ahmed.

Six grenades, a Kalashnikov, a repeater and two pistols were seized from their custody.

Protest against suspect’s killing in encounter

Several people protested outside the Karachi Press Club on Sunday against the killing of a suspected Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan militant in an alleged encounter in Mianwali Colony on Saturday by the police’s Counter-Terrorism Department.

The CTD officials had claimed that the suspect, Mohammad Khan, was linked with the banned TTP and was allegedly involved in a bomb attack on the Muttahida Qaumi Movement’s election camp in Nusrat Bhutto Colony in 2013 that had claimed lives of five people.

Around 30-40 protesters, mostly women relatives of the suspect, took part in the demonstration.

Talking to journalists, the protesters claimed that Mohammad Khan was innocent. They said that drug peddlers had occupied his home in Mianwali Colony in connivance with police and he was trying to get his home vacated from the encroachers when he was killed in a ‘fake’ encounter.

Police rejected the protesters’ charges as CTD SSP Amir Farooqi insisted it was a genuine encounter in which two policemen and a passerby were injured. He also rejected the relatives’ claims that the suspect was innocent.

The officer said that Mohammad Khan was a criminal who was wanted by police in several cases pertaining to attacks on police and others and had been declared an absconder by courts.

He said that at least 11 criminal cases were registered against the suspect at the Pirabad and Shahra-i-Noorjehan police stations.

Published in Dawn, May 2nd, 2016