ATC to hear Sahiwal police encounter case today
- By Web Desk -
- Apr 08, 2019
SAHIWAL: The accused of Sahiwal police encounter in which four people were killed, will be produced before an anti-terrorism court (ATC) on Monday (today), ARY News reported.
The court in a previous hearing admitted a plea filed by the accused, in which they had petitioned the court to remove Section 7 of the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) from the first information report (FIR) of the incident.
No accused has been indicted in the case in previous three hearings of the case. As per the relevant clause of Code of Criminal Procedure, the court will have to pass a verdict on the appeal for the removal of Section 7 from the FIR of the incident before indicting anyone in the main case.
The six officials who have been nominated in the case have been in judicial remand in jail.
In the incident four people including three members of a family were killed in police encounter in Sahiwal on January 19 this year.
The statements of the Counter Terrorism Department officials and the eyewitnesses accounts of the incident were found at variance from each other.
The prime minister took notice of the incident that caused an outcry across the country. He directed the Chief Minister of Punjab to initiate a probe and take stern action against the people responsible for the incident.
The policemen involved in the incident were detained on instructions of the prime minister and the Home Department of Punjab constituted a joint investigation team (JIT) to probe the incident.
The JIT in its report held the CTD officials, involved in the encounter, responsible for murder of three members of a family, while the probe team declared Zeeshan, the fourth person killed in the firing, a terrorism suspect.
A postmortem report and a medical report of injured disclosed that all four deceased were fired upon a close range, which burnt their skins. Areeba, 13 year child of the victim family, received six bullets and the doctors found her ribs broken.
Earlier, a Lahore High Court (LHC) two-judge bench turned down a plea to constitute a judicial commission to hold the probe.
The bench, headed by Chief Justice Sardar Muhammad Shamim Khan, observed that no law authorised the high court to form a judicial commission.
The court received a sealed report of a judicial inquiry of the incident conducted by a judicial magistrate into Sahiwal killings.
Muhammad Jalil, brother of Khalil, who was gunned down along with his wife and a teenage daughter in the Sahiwal incident, had sought constitution of a judicial commission.