Police officials who are investigating the alleged police encounter in the Gizri area on November 27 in which five suspected robbers were killed have claimed that the encounter did take place in which a police team was attacked with at least five weapons.
The incident was surrounded by a controversy after a lawyer’s family claimed that one of the men killed in the encounter was their driver and police had earlier taken him away from their house in Gizri.
The investigators have recorded statements of the police officials and personnel who participated in the alleged encounter as well as witnesses and residents of the area.
The lawyer, Ali Hasnain, who claims to be a senior advocate of the Sindh High Court (SHC), has, however, rejected the police version and said that cops had indeed barged into his house at 4am that day and took his mother and other guests as a hostage.
“The police took Abbas [the lawyer’s driver] and my vehicle with them and pictures circulated on a Chippa portal claimed that he was killed during a police encounter,” he said, blaming the police for killing his driver in a fake encounter.
“I am a senior lawyer of the Sindh High Court and am currently in Islamabad along with my wife,” he said, adding that he was not aware of the identity of the other four people killed in the alleged encounter.
Police investigators had also sent the empty shells seized from the scene of the alleged encounter to the forensic division of the Sindh police for the ballistics cross-matching. The ballistics report has stated that the police personnel had come under attack by five different weapons during the alleged encounter and a bullet seized from one of the cops’ bulletproof jacket that was allegedly fired by one of the robbers also confirmed the validity of the encounter.
Police on November 27 had claimed that five robbers were gunned down in an encounter in Defence Housing Authority (DHA).
However, when a woman claimed that one of the killed men, Muhammad Abbas, was her driver, the chief of the South Range of the Karachi Police, Deputy Inspector General of Police (DIG) Javed Akbar Riaz, took notice of the incident and initiated an internal inquiry into the encounter.
In a statement, police said a patrol team of the Gizri police station spotted a suspicious vehicle, which was a Vigo, at about 4:30am at the 5th Commercial Street, DHA Phase-IV, and as the suspects saw the police team, they jumped inside a bungalow, police personnel entered the house to catch them, after which they opened fire on the police team.
As the police returned fire, all of the suspects were injured, the statement claimed. It added that the police team took the injured suspects to a hospital when they succumbed to their injuries.
Four of them were identified as Muhammad Abbas, Ghulam Mustafa, Muhammad Abid and Muhammad Riaz but the fifth one could not be identified immediately. The statement said weapons, including 30 bore and 9mm pistols, and CNICs were found from their possession.
Police claimed that the suspects were members of a notorious gang of robbers who were Saraikis and their ringleader was Mustafa, who was killed in the encounter.
Police said Mustafa had earlier been jailed and he was also wanted by the Jalalpur Peer Wala and Dhoorkot police of Punjab.