LAHORE: The killing of two brothers described by police as desperate gangsters in a `police encounter’ a few days before Eid in crime-prone locality of Shahdara Town has brought a relief for residents.

Identified as Abbas and Ali Haider, the suspects were allegedly running a criminal gang in the name of ‘Topi Gang’.

According to the police investigations, Abbas and Ali Haider were the security guards, one offering services at a private bank while the other at a private business outlet. They used to commit street crime at night.

They were allegedly eliminated in a police counter some 24 hours after they killed a young girl Aniqa in front of her father and another man during a looting spree on 27th night of Ramadan.

Thousands of Shahdara Town residents took to the streets soon after the encounter and surrounded police vans, showered them with flowers and raised slogans in favour of police.

Several teams of the police including Crime Investigation Agency, Investigation Wing, Dolphin and Operations Wing have been working in the area for the last two months to trace them after they killed five local residents and injured six others. A mobile phone footage showed the suspects firing indiscriminately on citizens.Shahdara Town SHO Mohammad Raza told Dawn the police took two months to trace and arrest the two robbers as the local residents were so terrified that they avoided sharing any details of the criminals .

He said that DIG Operations Lahore Ali Nasir Rizvi assigned task to the two other SHOs, including Imran Niazi and Zaka, who were in Shahdara Town for the last two weeks to nab these criminals.

He said Aniqa’s family was preparing for her marriage after Eidul Fitr and she had left her home for shopping along with her father on the day when she was murdered by the gangsters. Her father was also shot at and critically injured by the same robbers while offering resistance.

The police record of the killed robbers showed they were behind every major heinous criminal activity in Shahdara Town, the SHO said.

“We deployed six female constables in plain clothes for census survey just to get information about the two criminals, installed many safe city cameras in Ittehad and Siraj parks”, the SHO said, adding that the suspects used to leave house separately in the night to commit crime.Another police official said the killing two innocent citizens and the murder of two suspects in a police encounter have brought the high crime rate of Shahdara Town in the limelight.

It was one of the 85 police stations of the provincial capital Lahore where crime against property was more than even a few small districts of the province.

He said a police constable was also among those murdered by these two gangsters beside other citizens, he said. They had also shot at and injured another constable Mahmood Ali.

The IGP held a meeting with the police officers including the three SHOs and acknowledged their services in eliminating the gang from the Shahdara Town area.

Published in Dawn, April 13th, 2024