KARACHI: Pakistan’s paramilitary rangers on Saturday handed over to police four of their personnel over the killing of an unarmed man in a public park that shocked the nation.
Two other soldiers from the paramilitary force, Shahid Zafar and Mohammed Afzal, were on Friday remanded into police custody for five days over the killing, which was captured on camera and broadcast repeatedly on television.
“We have handed over four more rangers personnel to the police investigating into the young boy’s killing,” rangers spokesman Farooq Bilal told AFP.
He said the names of the four would be released to the media later.
“The four personnel were handed over as soon as we received the request from the police,” said Bilal.
Security forces shot dead Sarfaraz Shah, 22, in Karachi on Wednesday, accusing him of robbery, but his family has demanded justice, insisting he was an innocent student passing the time of day.
The widely viewed footage showed a clean-shaven man wearing black trousers and a navy shirt crying and pleading for his life as a soldier cocks his rifle at his neck, then shoots him twice in the hand and thigh in a local park.
As his blood pours onto the ground, the man begs for help from soldiers - who appear to do nothing but watch - until he falls unconscious.
Police said earlier they had also taken custody of Afsar Khan, a man in plainclothes who dragged the victim over to the paramilitary soldiers and later filed a criminal case accusing the victim Shah of robbery.
Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry on Friday directed the government to remove from their posts Major General Aijaz Chaudhry, head of the paramilitary in Sindh province, and Sindh police chief Fayyaz Leghari.
The victim’s brother Salik Shah, a local TV reporter, said the family wanted to see everyone involved face justice.
The incident mirrored the killings last month in the southwestern Baluchistan province of five unarmed Chechens, one of them a pregnant woman, that are also under investigation.
Local journalists and other activists held a demonstration Saturday in front of Karachi press club and hanged an effigy in rangers’ uniform, an AFP reporter at the scene said.
“We want justice! Hang the killers! We want security and not bullets!” they shouted.
“The incidents like the one we witnessed three days ago in Karachi creates a sense of insecurity among the people,” former supreme court judge Fakhruddin Ebrahim said in his brief address to the 80 or so protesters.
“Pakistan is passing through very difficult times and the situation will worsen to a great extent if the government fails to provide security and safety to the people,” he said.
Dear visitor, the comments section is undergoing an overhaul and will return soon.