KARACHI: The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) on Tuesday shared with media their fact-finding report on the fatal police encounter of April 28 in Manno Goth, Baloch Para, PIB Colony, in which four young men were killed in an alleged police encounter.

Providing the background, HRCP vice-chairperson Qazi Khizar said that the incident took place around 10pm on April 28, near old Sabzi Mandi and they got to know about it though social media at first.

He said that was when they went to Manno Goth and met the families of the young men, namely Bilal (22) son of Usman, Amir (21) s/o Rasool Bux, Mohammad Islam (18) and Masood s/o Riaz (20).

“There were the police saying that they were gangsters and there were their families denying it. They said that the men were arrested when one of them, Masood, got injured. Then when the families went looking for them at the PIB Colony Police Station, they were told to go to the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital. There they learned that the injured Masood was taken to JPMC and Islam to the Civil Hospital Trauma Centre, while Amir and Bilal were dead. To this day, the families have not been shown any FIR against the men, any post-mortem reports, anything from the medico-legal officer. And when they tried to file an FIR, it was not allowed,” said Qazi Khizar.

He said that the HRCP formed a fact-finding team with Asad Iqbal, co-chairperson of HRCP, civil society activists Saeed Baloch and Abdul Hai, Advocate Shoaib M. Ashraf, academician and rights activist Dr Tauseef Ahmed and himself as its members to look into the matter. “We met the SHO of the PIB Colony Police Station Haroon Korai, who informed that Bilal and Islam already had a number of FIRs filed against them. They were habitual criminals,” he said.

On hearing this, one of the men’s mothers got emotional. Rozina, the mother of Bilal was also at the HRCP office on Tuesday and she just grew hysterical on hearing her late son’s name and the allegations against him. “My young beautiful son was no criminal. These armed men in uniform pumped 14 bullets in my poor unarmed son, and then they call him a criminal? Had he been doing the things he has been accused of by the police, we would have been living in better circumstances. Come to my place and see what kind of a lowly existence I lead,” she cried.

Such sentiments were also seen when the families of the men blocked main University Road in protest soon after their deaths.

Qazi Khizar said that the HRCP team was informed by SHO Korai that he had orders from above that the four men were up to something. He also said that the police told them that the men fired at them first.

“We were informed that Masood fired at the police and then escaped although they had injured him in retaliation. Then Bilal and Amir were killed too by the police and Islam was sent to hospital as he was injured. It is strange that even though Masood was also injured, the police could not catch him then,” he wondered, adding that the entire story given to them by the police was then proved wrong through closed-circuit television camera footage from a shop’s camera.

“The police didn’t know of the video. HRCP watched it and it was clear that Masood is running with a mobile phone in one hand while his other hand is empty. There is no gun there. Then when he was fired at, the bullet hit him in the chest and he fell down. But there was another bullet wound in his leg found later, meaning that he was fired upon again after being hit. All the bodies had bullet wounds above the waist level in their back, in their chest, neck and head. It is clear the police wanted to kill them. Neighbourhood eyewitnesses also say that the boys were surrounded by the police,” he said.

“After reaching the conclusion that what happened was no police encounter but something else, the HRCP wants a proper investigation into this case,” he said.

Asad Butt of the HRCP said that they found out that the investigation officer of the relevant police station has so far not even visited the scene of the crime. “He is working only on evidence given to him by his colleagues in the police. But the police are law enforcement agency. It is only expected to arrest suspects and understand that they are innocent until proven guilty. But here we are witnessing the law of the jungle, which spreads anarchy. People lose faith in the system,” he added.

Advocate of the Supreme Court Shoaib M. Ashraf said that there were too many questions that sprang up after studying the case closely.

Dr Tauseef Ahmed said that he felt highly appalled over the fact that a doctor in Civil Hospital Trauma Centre was not allowed to do his job. “He had wanted an MRI done on Islam but the police did not allow it. The police hindered treatment of a patient in a hospital. The doctor’s slip for an MRI has the date of May 1 on it and the patient died on May 3 without getting the prescribed treatment thanks to the police, who were to accompany the patient during his treatment but did not care,” he said.

Published in Dawn, May 26th, 2021