MULTAN, Sept 10: “Police have killed another of my sons in cold blood to appease area landlords,” alleged Naseem Bibi in a choking voice at a hamlet in Kot Addu tehsil, Muzaffargarh.

Weeping bitterly, she said: “Of my six sons, two have been killed by police, as many are languishing in prison, one is on the run for life and only the youngest of them all (ten-year-old) is with me.”

As if this was not enough, the woman said, police picked up her husband, a retired high schoolteacher, on the day when the family was observing soyem of Junaid.

Junaid, 26, was shot dead in an encounter with Layyah Saddar police on Aug 13 last when he was on his way to a friend’s place along with his brothers Obaidullah and Moazzam, and pal Riaz by a car. Moazzam also suffered an injury and remained hospitalized for some days in police custody.

The police said one Ishfaq Husain informed them on phone that he was on his way to Ladhana village from Juman Shah on his tractor to lift wheat when four people, in a car (MNV-3250), stopped him near Chak 157/TDA and snatched Rs2,000 from him before fleeing towards Juman Shah.

The police claimed to have spotted the car near Chak 162/TDA. Its occupants, when asked to surrender, opened fire at the team. The law-enforcers said they returned fire and then searched the car in which one of the robbers, who was later identified as Junaid, was found dead and another injured. The police claimed to have recovered two pistols and a Kalashnikov from them.

Earlier, Junaid’s brother Shahid and his friend Akram were killed in what the Mahmoodkot police (of Muzaffargarh) described an encounter, on March 7 last. Headed by inspector Azmatullah Gurmani, the police team claimed that they raided the outhouse of Shahid in the riverine area and asked the inmates to surrender, but they opened fire on police. In a shootout that followed, the police said, Shahid and Akram were shot instantly while the former’s father Master Khursheed and brother Junaid fled firing indiscriminately at police.

Thereafter, elderly Master Khursheed developed a tremor and now he cannot see beyond a few feet.

Recalling the first encounter, Naseem Bibi said: “It was early in the morning when police besieged their home at Mauza Zor and inquired about Shahid. “The next moment I saw Shahid coming out of the single-room outhouse with his hands up, but the police opened fire at him. I and my husband cried and ran towards our son when some of the policemen stopped us,” she said.

She alleged: “Azmatullah put a kalashnikov in the hands of deceased Shahid and started airing messages through wireless that some outlaws had opened fire at police and they were about to retaliate.”

Rivalry between Azmatullah and Master Khursheed dates back to 1998 when a local landlord forcibly took away the latter’s car (FDC-9433) that he had bought under the Yellow Cab Scheme, and a tractor (MHA-2454). Master Khursheed sought help of the police, who recovered the vehicles from the landlord belonging to the Khar clan.

Azmatullah, who was then also the Mahmoodkot police SHO and a close aide of the landlord, pressured the complainant to withdraw the case if he wanted to have his vehicles back.

Master Khursheed, however, brought the matter to the notice of the then Muzaffargarh SSP, Saeed Ahmad Khan, who directed the SHO to hand over the vehicles to their owner without delay. This annoyed the SHO, who after the incident bore a malice against Khursheed and his family.

In the meanwhile, Master Khursheed’s elder son Azam bought a pick-up on instalments from Nazeer Khitran of Barkhan, Balochistan. Later, Azam and Khitran had a dispute over payment. Khitran approached Azmatullah Gurmani through an area landlord (of Arain clan), who was among the central characters of the infamous Parco land scam.

Azmatullah wasted no time in arresting Junaid and producing him before the district magistrate to repatriate him to Barkhan where Khitran had managed to file a case against Azam and Junaid for vehicle snatching. The DM, however, refused to hand over Junaid to Khitran until he had some officials of Balochistan with him. However, the Arain landlord allegedly forced Master Khursheed’s family to strike a deal with Kithran and mortgaged documents of a tract owned by the family in his favour as a guarantee to get the deal enforced).

Frustrated beyond measure, Azmatullah decided to make the family’s life difficult with the support of the Khar and Arain landlords. In August 2002, when Azmatullah was the Muzaffargarh city police SHO, he picked up Master Khursheed to interrogate him in a robbery case registered against unnamed people.

At this, Master’s son Shahid filed a habeas corpus petition with the Multan bench of the LHC. When the police offered justification for Master Khursheed’s detention under the Section 54 CrPC, the court admonished the SHO for abuse of power and directed him to immediately release the man.

Naseem Bibi alleged that Azmatullah killed her son Shahid in a staged encounter to exact revenge for his defeat in court.

Whenever Azmatullah got an opportunity, he registered cases against Master Khursheed and his sons. Although in none of the cases could police substantiate charges against the family, these became a sword of Damocles for the man and his sons who started staying away from home to save their lives.

After Shahid’s murder, Naseem Bibi said, Azmatullah approached her family for a patch-up through a local influential and offered compensation to withdraw the cases she had filed with the High Court to seek justice. But, the woman refused to give in.

When contacted during interrogation, Moazzam, Obaidullah and Riaz told this correspondent that the police had been torturing them to make them accept responsibility for all the untraceable motorcycles stolen in Layyah in the past two years.

Moazzam, an employee at the head office of Pak-Arab Refinery Company (Parco) in Karachi, said he visited his home on a leave when he, along with his brothers and a friend, was invited to a lunch by an acquaintance at Sinawah area on Aug 13 last. He said Junaid, who was driving the car, smelt a rat when he saw a number of policemen in civvies roaming in the area.

He said Junaid was scared for being “wanted” in the previous encounter case, and therefore he diverted the car towards Layyah where a traffic police team signalled them to stop. However, Junaid sped away and was chased by several police mobile teams, including the Elite Force. Moazzam said he and others in the car repeatedly asked Junaid to stop the car, but he was afraid that he would be killed by the police at the behest of Azmatullah in a fake encounter.

The car, Moazzam said, was in the fields soon. Junaid was shot dead and Moazzam injured in the police firing. He denied that they were carrying arms and that they had fired at the police. “We were moaning and crying when some policemen pulled us out of the car,” he recalled, adding that the policemen, who took part in the encounter, wanted to kill them all, but the Layyah DPO reached there and refrained them from going ahead with their plan.

Layyah Saddar SHO Malik Khalil lodged two separate FIRs, one about the encounter and the other about the recovery of illegal arms from the outlaws. Besides, he was also the author of an FIR lodged on the report of the tractor driver.

Naseem Bibi saw a conspiracy behind the killing of her second son in yet another police encounter. She based her argument on the fact that both Azmatullah Gurmani and Malik Khalil belonged to Dera Ghazi Khan and were recognized as bosom friends.

However, Layyah DPO Azhar Hameed Khokhar denied any foul play in the encounter which resulted in the death of Junaid. He said four people in the car, including Junaid, were reported to have robbed a salesman of a tobacco company on July 31 last.

Ironically, the police claimed that the outlaws had the same number plate on the car in both the incidents. Besides, the outlaws were so foolhardy that after robbing the tractor driver they remained in the vicinity to despoil others. Weary of frequent police raids after the killing of Shahid and Akram in the encounter, Master Khursheed migrated to Kot Addu with his family and started living in a rented house. Despite knowing the fact, the Mahmoodkot police raided his abandoned house at Mauza Zor the day when Junaid was killed and, according to the area people, they demolished its boundary walls and fired several rounds in the air.

Three days after Junaid’s death, police stormed into Khursheed’s rented house and arrested him for being wanted for firing at police when his son Shahid was killed in an encounter.

Residents of Mauza Zor, when contacted by this correspondent, said they always found Master Khursheed and his sons thorough gentlemen.

Requesting anonymity, they said Master Khursheed’s family was ruined by the landlords of the Khar and Arain clans and their henchmen in the police department.