Who was Shahid Hayat?

Former city police chief Shahid Hayat who remained in the media spotlight for years on account of the Karachi operation and the murder of Mir Murtaza Bhutto passed away on Tuesday night.

The former additional inspector general (AIG) Karachi had been suffering from cancer for a long time, succumbed to it at a private hospital last night.

Hailing from Dera Ismail Khan, Hayat began his government service as a civil judge in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in 1988 after passing Civil Service Examination (CSS).

Shahid Hayat Khan passed the CSS examination in 1989 and joined the civil service in 1991 regularly. He received the first deployment of the Police Service in Lahore in 1992 as ASP. In 1993, he was selected on a mission to the United States and moved abroad.

On his return in 1995 when lawlessness and police operations were on the rise, Hayat was posted as a sub-divisional police officer in Pak Colony, the most dangerous area of Karachi those days. During the operation against the terrorists, he was critically injured in the attack. He was hit in the face with a bullet, whoever he returned to the same area after a month-long treatment in the hospital.

Before being appointed as AIG Karachi, Hayat served as DIG of Special Branch. He was appointed as Karachi police chief days after the Karachi operation kicked off on September 5, 2013, on the directives of the then prime minister Nawaz Sharif following the increased incidents of target killings, extortions and abductions.

Hayat played a vital role during Karachi operation, in collaboration with the paramilitary force. He faced tremendous pressure from some political quarters during the operation. However, on May 2014, in a major reshuffle in the police hierarchy, Hayat was replaced by Ghulam Qadir Thebu on the orders of the Supreme Court, directing the Sindh government to remove all officers working on the “own pay scale” (OPS) basis.

Earlier in his career, Hayat, among several other police officers, remained embroiled in the Mir Murtaza Bhutto murder case in 1996, from which he was subsequently cleared. Hayat also headed investigations of several high-profile cases including the Shahzeb Khan murder case, which culminated in the arrest of Shahrukh Jatoi and his conviction. He also supervised the investigation into the Abbas Town bombing and arrested several suspects.

In 2014, Hayat served as Director Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) Sindh and before that he served as DIG of the Crime Investigation Department. In October 2016, Hayat fell seriously ill during a visit to Nairobi, Kenya where he remained under treatment for some time. Hayat was in Nairobi as part of a delegation of the National Institute of Management, Lahore where he was attending the mandatory senior management course. Following recuperation, Hayat was transferred to the Motorways Police in September 2017.

Hayat spent his life in a two-bedroom flat given by the police. Even after becoming head of the Karachi police, he lived there.

He is survived by a wife and two daughters.