LAHORE, May 14: The killing of four sectarian militants, including Riaz Basra, in a staged encounter in Vehari is a “futile exercise” and will have no impact on measures to counter terrorism.

“It does not seem to work if it has been carried out to arrest the fresh wave of terrorism in the country,” a senior officer in the Punjab police said on condition of anonymity.

“We had used these tactics in the past and we had not been able to get the desired results except for bringing a brief halt to terrorist activities,” the officer said. Instead we had had a severe backlash from militant groups who killed dozens of innocent people.

The law enforcers during the Nawaz government had adopted a policy to kill criminals in staged encounters to improve he crime graph. They had even for the first time killed sectarian militants in staged shootouts.

Sheikhupura SSP president Asghar Mujahid was the first target of the law enforcers during the Nawaz government in September, 1997. He was arrested when he and accomplices allegedly killed a man from an opposite sect in the Lahore General Hospital. Later, he was killed in a staged shootout.

Then law enforcers had been given a licence to kill by the Nawaz government who killed some 36 members of the banned SSP and Lashkar-i-Jhangvi till the Sharifs were made to go in October, 1999.

It brought no improvement in the law and order situation as only in the Punjab some 200 people were killed in 96 sect-related attacks in 1997, 78 in 36 incidents in 1998 and 66 in 22 incidents in 1999. The militants retaliated strongly and they even blew up a bridge in Lahore in an attempt to assassinate then prime minister Nawaz Sharif.

The Vehari killings were not the first incident in the present military setup. Around a dozen sectarian militants of different banned groups including Shakeel Anwar, Fayyaz Tarar, Amjad, Javed, and Lal Din alias Lalo had been killed.

The practice made no impact and strikes by terrorists continued. From October, 1999, to date, around 400 people had fallen a prey to different acts of terrorism in the country.

Those sectarian militants killed in the Nawaz government included Asghar Mujahid, Khalid Husain, Qari Attique, Hafiz Sanaullah, Mohammad Kashif, Mohammad Afzal, Mohammad Ramzan, Sarfraz Khan, Mohammad Arshad, Noor Gul, Hafiz Tariq Moavia, Laiq Ahmad, Saleem Shahzad, Mohammad Yasin, Aleem Aslam, Taneev Hassan, Qari Younus and Faqir Husain.