LAHORE: An anti-terrorism court on Friday sought personal appearance of all members of a medical board that conducted autopsy of those killed in Sahiwal encounter.

The government had constituted a board comprising six doctors of the Sahiwal Civil Hospital to carry out autopsy of the victims.

ATC-I Judge Arshad Hussain Bhutta directed a state prosecutor to ensure appearance of the doctors on Saturday (today).

Earlier, two private witnesses (common citizens) recorded their statements and expressed their inability to recognise the accused police officials present in court.

Muhammad Khalil, his wife and their three children were travelling by a car, with neighbour Zeeshan behind steering wheel, when CTD personnel stopped the vehicle and opened fire on the passengers suspecting them to be terrorists. Khalil’s two children Umair and Muneeba had survived the attack.

The officials claimed that they had information that Zeeshan had links with a terrorist outfit. They also claimed that all the victims were killed in an ‘encounter’ which turned out to be false after the two minor children narrated facts of the incident to the public.

Initially, the trial was conducted in Sahiwal, however, the Lahore High Court had on June 17 shifted the proceedings to Lahore allowing an application filed by the victims’ family. The petitioners contended that they had been facing problems while attending trial proceedings in Sahiwal. They also cited security reasons and asked the court to shift the trial proceedings from Sahiwal to Lahore.

Previously, Zeeshan’s brother Eihtesham, Khalil’s brother Jalil and two children recorded their statements before the court. Jalil said he was not present on the spot while the children said they were unable to recognise the accused police officials present in court. The court has so far recorded statements of 22 private witnesses engaged by police during the course of investigation.

The accused officials included Safdar Hussain, Ahsan Khan, Ramzan, Saifullah, Hasnain and Nasir Nawaz.

Published in Dawn, September 14th, 2019