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LAHORE, Dec 10: A baby boy and a head constable were killed in a lopsided police operation in Haji Park, Shadbagh, on Monday morning.
Eyewitnesses told reporters that the operation continued for some six hours and police resorted to indiscriminate firing after one of its personnel died.
It was an ill planned raid, a resident said and claimed that it seemed that police force had no officer in command that resulted in the deaths of the minor boy and the policeman.
New Anarkali police DSP Chaudhry Shafqat and his staff laid siege to a house at about 2am on the information that some ‘bank robbery’ suspects were present there. They were assisted by the Shadbagh police station personnel. They asked the inmates to surrender. Instead of complying with the orders, the inmates opened fire on the raiding team. Police returned the fire and a crossfire followed.
Police radioed a message about the shootout and asked for reinforcement. Teams from the city division police, the CIA and Elite Force rushed to the scene and joined the operation.
The inmates kept on firing at intervals. Instead of waiting for the outlaws break down psychologically or run out of their ammunition, the police itself lost patience and fired tear gas shells into the house.
Residents of the locality were also affected from the tear gas and ran helter skelter and gathered some distance away.
Amid heavy tear gas shelling, Head Constable Yaqoob, 40, of Ravi Road police, tried to climb up to the roof of the house by using a ladder. The outlaws shot him in the chest. He fell down and died on the spot.
In the meantime, the whole locality plunged into darkness due to power outage. Police intensified tear gas shelling and firing, forcing the alleged robbers to leave the house and run in different directions.
Bands of three to four robbers jumped over the roof of adjacent houses. Police followed them while continuing firing. Chasing the accused, police burst into several houses. They entered the house of a labourer, Ishfaq, and started firing. A bullet hit his two-year-old son Danish who was sleeping beside his mother. He died on the spot.
According to the residents, all the outlaws managed their escape and police took a house owner, Ashraf, and a passerby into custody. Both were released later. However, some people claimed that two of the outlaws surrendered before police.
Ashraf told police that the accused had got a house on mortgage for Rs200,000 about five days ago.
Police, however, claimed that they had arrested three of the accused, Tariq alias Tarqi, Azam and Waris alias Warsi.
Warsi was also wanted in a robbery-cum-murder. A case under the Anti-Terrorism Act has been registered against him, police said.
SP SPEAKS: Talking to Dawn, city division SP Raja Farooq Sajid claimed that the accused were involved in the recent spate of bank robberies.
“DSP Chaudhry Shafqat had information that the accused were hiding in the house,” he said and added that the operation was launched on the DSP’s tip off.
For the killing of the minor boy, the SP said it was an accident as a stray bullet had hit the baby. “We regret it.”
Police sources, however, said the DSP’s bid to get credit of the arrests turned the operation into a failure. The DSP was attending a meeting presided over by the Lahore SSP on Sunday night when one of his sources, an ASI working with the CIA, approached him with the information, they added.
The DSP left the meeting without informing his high-ups and launched the operation on his own, they maintained.
A spokesman for the Lahore police claimed that the Lahore SSP had the information about the robbers who passed it on to the DSP for action. He said two accomplices of the arrested robbers had managed their escape.
Meanwhile, the bodies were sent to the city mortuary for autopsy. The body of HC Yaqoob was handed over to his family after a postmortem examination. It was taken to the District Police Lines where his funeral prayers were offered.
Yaqoob was a resident of Raiwind and had left behind a widow and six children.
On behalf of the Punjab government, the police department announced a Rs500,000 compensation for his family.
