THE trial of retired SSP Malir Rao Anwar in the Naqeebullah Mehsud murder case is emblematic of a dysfunctional state where those with the right connections can seemingly commit heinous acts with impunity. In a recent development, yet another prosecution witness has retracted his statement in court. It was nearly three years ago on Jan 13, 2018, that the 27-year-old was gunned down in cold blood along with three other individuals in an abandoned farmhouse in Karachi’s Malir district. The police declared that the three men were Taliban militants who had been killed in an ‘encounter’. The reality was quite different. Naqeebullah was an aspiring model; in fact none of the victims even had a criminal record. Their murder was the latest in a hideous saga of police brutality in which Rao Anwar played a leading role. Under him, Malir had been the staging ground for an improbable number of police encounters in the past few years; so much so that the cop was often referred to as an ‘encounter specialist’. According to the police’s own record, it emerged later that Rao Anwar had been involved in 444 extrajudicial killings. The situation was all the more remarkable for the fact that no cops ever seemed to sustain any injuries in these ‘shoot-outs’ and yet, there was not a single investigation into them.

Naqeebullah’s murder, however, touched a nerve. Public pressure, led by his friends and family — most of all by his dignified, stoic father, Mohammed Khan — led to Rao Anwar and 17 other cops finally being charged with the killing in March 2019. But by then it had become clear that the now retired police official was above the law, as unaccountable as his alleged backers. Instead of being detained in jail, he was confined for a short time to the comfort of his own home, conveniently declared a sub-jail on flimsy pretexts. Whenever he arrived for a court hearing, he did so without handcuffs and was given full protocol — a far cry from the treatment that ‘ordinary’ accused are meted out. In July, two key prosecution witnesses turned hostile. Naqeebullah’s father had been receiving threats for pursuing the case; in the end, he died of cancer in December 2019, still awaiting justice. Rao Anwar’s trial could have been a chance to set right a terrible injustice, and chart a new course for the police. Sadly, it seems that day is still far off.

Published in Dawn, November 2nd, 2020