Sarwar vows to bring perpetrators of Sahiwal incident to book

LAHORE: Punjab Governor Chaudhry Muhammad Sarwar pledged on Saturday to bring those responsible for the Sahiwal incident to book.

Taking to Twitter, the governor said those who killed the innocent people are not only the offenders of the law and the state but the victim family as well.

The state would fulfill the promise of bringing the perpetrators to the dock so that no one had the audacity to kill an innocent person in the future, he added.

Yesterday, Prime Minister Imran Khan had ordered the Punjab government to challenge the verdict announced by a special anti-terrorism court (ATC) acquitting all suspects in the Sahiwal ‘encounter’ case.

Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Information and Broadcasting Dr Firdous Ashiq Awan tweeted on Friday that the prime minister also instructed the authorities to investigate weaknesses and loopholes in the case.

In a subsequent tweet, Chaudhry Sarwar said that the whole country had seen the video of the parents being shot in front of their children. “The government is committed to providing justice to [these] innocent children. If their family doesn’t become the complainant, then the state will act as the complainant in the case.”

Earlier on Thursday, the ATC had acquitted all six suspects in the case of killing four persons in an alleged encounter earlier this year.

Six accused namely, Safdar, Ahsan, Saifullah, Husnain and Nasir were acquitted due to lack of evidence giving them the benefit of doubt.

During hearings of the case, the court had recorded statements of 49 witnesses, including close relatives of a victim Zeeshan and another victim Mohammad Khalil.

The Sahiwal tragedy

In January, four people, including two women, were killed in a shady encounter involving the Punjab police’s counter-terrorism department (CTD) on a highway in the Qadirabad area of Sahiwal district on Saturday noon.

The CTD officials maintained that a car was signaled to stop along with a bike near Sahiwal Toll Plaza but the alleged terrorists resorted to firing, adding that three terrorists were able to flee away. “This incident was a continuity of the Jan 16 operation carried out in Faisalabad.”

The victims were identified as grocery store owner Mohammad Khalil, his wife Nabila, their 13-year-old daughter Areeba and their friend who was driving the car, Zeeshan Javed. Their son Umair Khalil sustained bullet wounds while his sister Muniba’s hand also sustained gunshot-related injuries and Hadiba, their younger sister remained unhurt.