Naqeebullah Mehsud died from ‘chest injury’ during fake encounter, court told

KARACHI: An anti-terrorism court on Friday heard the case of Naqeebullah Mehsud, a youth from South Waziristan who was killed in a fake police encounter.

The court was told Naqeebullah Mehsud died from ‘chest injury’ caused by two bullets that pierced through his upper torso during a police encounter.

This was disclosed by prosecution witness and then medico-legal officer at the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC) Dr Abdul Ghaffar Shaikh who had conducted a postmortem of the victim.

Former SSP Malir Rao Anwar along around two dozen policemen has been charged with killing Naqeeb and three others in a ‘fake encounter’ on 13th January, 2018.

The ATC-III judge is conducting the trial in the judicial complex inside the central prison. Rao Anwar and some other suspect suspects on bail were present in the court while others had been brought from the prison.

The state prosecutor produced witness Dr Ghaffar to record his statement in the case. He filed a statement with the postmortem examination reports of the victims including Naqeebullah Mehsud.

In the post-mortem report of Naqeeb, the medico-legal officer said that his cause of death was “bullet injury in his chest” as two bullets entered his upper torso from the front side and went out from his back at the same point, creating a two-centimetre hole.

The witness said Naqeeb died from the injury in the chest. He further said the cause of death of three other victims, who were also shot dead during the encounter, was cardiac arrest.

The prosecution produced two other witnesses, sub-inspectors Mumtaz and Saleem, for cross-examination by the defence counsel for the accused. Another witness Abdul Rahim was also produced for recording his testimony.

The defence counsel for former Rao Anwar was not present in court, and therefore, the cross-examination of MLO and two police officers and testimony of the witness could not be done and will now be conducted on 7th October.

In February, the court had allowed Naqeeb’s brother Alam Sher to become complainant in the case after his father Mohammad Khan passed away in December 2019. According to the prosecution, the police officials kidnapped Naqeeb and three others for ransom and killed them in a ‘fake encounter’.

The killing of Naqeeb had sparked widespread protests by civil society members and chief justice of Pakistan Mian Saqib Nisar had taken took suo motu notice of the killings.

A trial court had declared Naqeeb and three other victims innocent and quashed the cases filed against them. In March 2019, an ATC indicted Anwar and others for killing the victims in a ‘fake encounter’.