LARKANA, Jan 9: Sindh Chief Minister Dr. Arbab Ghulam Rahim, stressing that police were just performing their duty, ordered an inquiry into the killing in encounter of Imran Ali Supro who police alleged was a bandit and his relatives insisted was a poor carpenter.

The chief minister who arrived in the city on Tuesday to inspect the site for the Larkana-Khairpur Bridge being constructed on Indus River at Aliabad village of Bakrani taluka some 25 kilometres from here added that criminals lived in the disguise of ‘respectable’ people in the day and committed crimes in the darkness of night.

He directed Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Akhtar Gorchani to conduct probe into the killing who said that police killed Imran Ali Supro in an encounter while his three accomplices managed to escape on late Monday night near a police picket of Bhai Khan Jo Laro in Ratodero.

But scores of people who staged a sit-in on Ratodero bypass road in protest against the killing of their 18-year-old relative late Imran Supro rejected the DIG’s claim that he was a bandit.

The protestors led by Gul Hassan Ghanghro, Akbar Arbani and Dr Anwar Buledi carrying the teenager’s dead body chanted slogans against police and insisted that late Supro was a poor carpenter.

The protesters were later joined by MNA Shahid Bhutto and MPA Ayaz Soomro and activists of different political parties and citizens’ alliances.

The three-hour blockade suspended traffic on the roads to Larkana, Shahdadkot and Sukkur-Shikarpur. When no police officer turned up to talk to them the protestors announced they would observe shutter-down strike in Ratodero on Wednesday in protest.

Reports reaching here said that Ratodero police had on the complaint of Head Constable Shahjehan Bhutto registered a case against late Imran Supro under sections 324, 353 PPC 34 and 401.