Incidents like Sahiwal should be handled appropriately: CM Murad

KARACHI: Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah has said that while incidents like Sahiwal should not happen, but if they, they should be handled appropriately.

In an exclusive interview to ARY News, the chief minister said that there had been similar incidents in Sindh, some even during his tenure, but how a government responded to such incidents was ‘very important.’

“These kind of incidents shouldn’t happen, unfortunately they have happened in my term too”, he said.

“Whenever such incidents happen, police’s initial claim is always that it had killed criminals, but the government should call it out immediately”, he added.

Alleged encounter

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 Sahiwal incident sent shock waves across the country after one of the surviving children who witnessed the episode refuted the version of the CTD.

A child, Omair Khalil, in his initial statement said his father offered money to the people in return for not shooting at their car. “They killed my father and took the children away.”

A CTD official relayed 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.”