Sahiwal incident: Victim families meet Senate Standing Committee on Interior
The identification parade of six under custody CTD officials will also be held.
SAHIWAL (Dunya News) – Heirs of Sahiwal firing incident victims have met Senate Standing Committee on Interior in Islamabad today (Tuesday).
During the meeting, Rehman Malik termed the incident as target killing and also rejected the Joint Investigation Team (JIT).
Talking to media, the victim relatives said that JIT is complicating the case and they are in immense mental stress after the formation of this inquiry team. JIT is not leading the case in the right direction, they added.
The family said that eyewitnesses are afraid of police officers that’s why they are not coming to record their statements.
During the visit, the identification parade of six under custody Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) officials will also be held.
Earlier, the autopsy report revealed that four people including two women were brutally shot in the head. 13-year-old Areeba who was gunned down along with her parents in an alleged encounter, was shot at six times due to which her ribs also fractured.
The report further stated that Areeba’s father Khalil was shot at 11 times from which one bullet pierced his head while her mother Nabeela was shot at four times.
Driver Zeeshan was shot at 13 times which caused bones to stick out of head skin.
On January 19, CTD officials killed four people, including a couple and their teenage daughter in an alleged “encounter” in Sahiwal, triggering a national outcry that prompted the government to take the security officials into custody and order an investigation into the incident.
The officials claimed that the ‘terrorists’ were killed in an intelligence based operation (IBO). Three other terrorists including Shahid Jabar and Abdul Rahman managed to flee during the chase near the toll plaza of Sahiwal.
They also claimed of confiscating explosives and weapons from the car adding that officers were investigating into the matter as part of the operation in Faisalabad on January 16.
Contrarily, an eye witness has told the media that the deceased were neither equipped with any weapon nor resisted officers whereas three children were also present in the car.
The eyewitnesses further said that the children while speaking to them at a nearby petrol station claimed that the “police have killed their parents”.
“Following the firing incident, the police left the children at the petrol station where they spoke to us. A few minutes later, however, CTD officials returned and took the children with them to an undisclosed location,” the eyewitnesses added.
