KARACHI, Nov 20: An armed encounter was averted at the last minute when a jeep intercepted by police on the Super Highway on Saturday as stolen turned out to be in the possession of a superintendent of police.
Well-placed sources said that a Land Cruiser (BC-4837), fitted with a tracker device, crossed the limits of the city on Saturday afternoon. The tracker company noticed the jeep leaving the city and informed the owner of the jeep, Abdul Ghani. The owner had told the company that the jeep should have been in the city and he asked the company to jam its fuel system if it was going out of the city. The tracker company did so and the police were informed about it immediately.
A police team chased the jeep and intercepted it on the Super Highway a few kilometres from the Toll Plaza. The police challenged the occupants of the jeep to surrender. The police got alert as two men were holding weapons. However, a mishap was averted after one of the occupants introduced himself as Noor Ahmed Peechuho, SP of the Sindh Forensic Science Laboratory, known as Criminalistic Division, located at the Garden police lines. Besides, two police guards in civvies, a serving judge, and a bureaucrat were also in the jeep along with the SP, the sources said. They added that the SP had to send back the jeep to his office. The judge sent for his own car and all of them drove to Hyderabad in it.
The sources said that an encounter was averted at the eleventh hour.
The husband of a sitting member of the provincial assembly was shot dead recently on the Super Highway when he and a friend were travelling in a car and did not stop when the police signalled them. A chase was carried out by the ACLC and the Motorway police and a misunderstanding claimed the life of the husband of the MPA, though the car was neither stolen nor snatched.
The sources said the jeep (BC-4837) was sent to the criminalistic division for forensic science laboratory (FSL) test to determine whether its engine and chassis numbers were genuine. The jeep was first intercepted by the Directorate General of Intelligence & Investigation Division of Customs and Excise. It was handed over to the Custom officials by the jeep owners. The officials sent it to the Criminalistic Division for verification on Oct 8. The sources said that the FSL examination was earlier performed on the premises of the Sharifabad office of the Anti-Car Lifting Cell. The testing procedure required a few hours and the report was prepared afterwards.
SP Peechohu had reportedly objected to the FSL examination being carried out on the premises of the ACLC office and asked his superiors to direct the ACLC to send all vehicles for FSL testing to his office as the Criminastic Division was competent for the FSL, ballistic testing and collection of fingerprints. However, the lab is not a matter of priority for the Sindh government, and some officials of the Home Department even do not know about the existence of the FSL. The predicament of the laboratory can be gauged from the fact that the fingerprint section does not have even a single typewriter or paper to write on. There is no required allocation of funds for this purpose.
The delay in the process of FSL testing appeared that the jeep had been in use of a police officer, the sources said, adding that no notice of this anomaly had been taken. The SP Peechuho could not be reached over the telephone for his comment despite repeated attempts.