SAHIWAL: Muhammad Jalil, the complainant and brother of Sahiwal incident victim Muhammad Khalil, will appear before the court of Senior Civil Judge Shakeel Ahmed Goraya at the District Courts today (Monday) regarding a judicial inquiry related to Sahiwal killings.

This is first time that he will come to Sahiwal for recording his statement about the controversial killings of his brother and his family members and a family friend, Zeeshan, by the officials of the Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) near Qadirabad on Jan 19.

Mr Jalil stated this while talking to Dawn on phone on Sunday.

It is learnt that on the repeated requests of Jalil and Zeeshan’s families Lahore High Court Chief Justice Sardar Muhammad Shamim had ordered a judicial inquiry into the incident and appointed Senior Civil Judge Shakeel Goraya for the said job.

Mr Jalil confirmed that he had received a court letter and would appear before the judge. He categorically stated he was not meeting any members of joint investigation team (JIT) formed by the Punjab Police or appearing before it. He said the family had shown dissatisfaction with ongoing JIT investigations under Additional DIG Ijaz Hussain Shah.

The District Court sources confirmed that the senior civil judge had issued notices to all parties regarding proceedings of the judicial inquiry.

While replying a question, Mr Jalil said he had no knowledge whether any member of Zeeshan’s family would appear for the judicial inquiry at Sahiwal or not.

It is important to note that Zeeshan’s mother and brother while appearing before Senate Standing Committee had denied Punjab Police’s claim that Zeeshan was a terrorist and he had links with operation held in Faisalabad two days before the Sahiwal incident.

On other hand, JIT head Ijaz Shah visited Sahiwal on Sunday to chair a second meeting of the JIT at Police Rest House, Police Lines, which was attended by all the team members.

A source close to the situation told Dawn that the JIT head had finalised two major tasks, i.e. completing challans of six CTD officials who were arrested in connection with Sahiwal killings and completion of the report going to be presented to Chief Minister Usman Buzdar on Feb 19.

The local Anti-Terrorist Court (ATC) had sent six CTD officials on 15 days judicial remand which would end on Feb 21.

It is learnt the JIT head also interrogated six arrested CTD officials before finalising the report to be presented to CM.

Published in Dawn, February 18th, 2019