ISLAMABAD, Aug 15: Police had all the right to open fire in self-defence without the permission of the magistrate as this law enforcement agency, too, could exercise the right guaranteed to every citizen under the law.

This contention was made by Deputy Attorney General Sardar Mohammad Aslam, counsel for the CDA, while defending the demolition plan of Sri Saral Village before the judicial commission inquiring into the incident of July 29, on Thursday.

A mafia of land grabbers and real estate agents intends to implicate CDA director enforcement Chaudhary Mohammad Ali in a false case of murder, therefore he has been accused of killing Haq Nawaz, a villager of Sri Saral, after the armed clash between the authority’s staff, police and the villagers, he contended.

He claimed that the allegation against the director enforcement was baseless and ill-founded as there was no reason for the official to kill the poor villager.

The victim was not a claimant. Neither did he own any land in the area, nor was he among those who put up resistance against the CDA operation. According to the witnesses, he was only grazing cattle in the fields adjacent to Sri Saral, Mr Aslam said.

He contended that there were several contradictions in the statements made by the witnesses. The villagers had encircled several unarmed policemen and two of them were kidnapped, so how could an officer snatch pistol from a police officer to kill a villager who had been shot in his forehead.

There was a big distance between Chaudhary Mohammad Ali and the deceased as narrated by the villagers, who later claimed that the man had been shot from a very close distance, Mr Aslam said.

He further submitted that officers of the district management group like Jodat Ayaz and AC Ajmal Bukhari, who sustained injuries during the operation, had also stated under oath that Chaudhary Mohammad Ali did not fire on any one”.

The commission, responding to this contention, noted: “Does it mean that people from the DMG group can not make any mis- statement?”

It asked the counsel: “You are holding talks with the dependents of the deceased, including Abdul Latif; you say they were black mailers and fraudulent people; if this is so, what do the talks mean?”

The counsel said the talks were being held to resolve the problem and to ensure early revival of the development work on the site.