KARACHI: Rangers personnel shot dead an unarmed young man on Friday reportedly mistaking him for a kidnapper.
Two Rangers personnel deployed in the Nagan Chowrangi area of Karachi saw the young man, 30-year-old Zeeshan, fighting with and slapping a woman, later identified as his estranged wife. They fired warning shots, but Zeeshan was unmoved by the firing. Therefore, in an attempt to arrest the man, one of them opened straight fire, killing the man and injuring his wife.
“The deceased was shot twice in the neck and arm at point blank range,” said Dr Sheraz, the medico-legal officer at the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital. Zeeshan succumbed to his injuries during treatment at the hospital.
“He was definitely killed as a result of the Rangers’ firing,” District West and Central police chief DIG Javed Odho told The Express Tribune. The police have not arrested the paramilitary troops responsible, however, an inquiry will be conducted and a case will be registered, he added.
In a statement issued immediately after the incident, a Rangers spokesperson admitted that their men did resort to firing, but they only did so because they thought the man was a kidnapper. “The people on the street reported the scuffle to the Rangers who were stationed at a picket and they said the man was apparently trying to abduct the woman,” said the spokesperson.
“Rangers personnel, while responding to the situation, fired warning shots into the air but the individual ignored them. Resultantly, one paramilitary soldier shot at the man to arrest him, but he later succumbed to his injuries.”
An inquiry into the incident has been ordered and details will be made public soon, he added.
But the victim’s family and friends demanded immediate arrest and punishment of the Rangers men responsible.
“No one has the right to open fire at innocent civilians,” said the victim’s relative, Ali Imran. “Why did the Rangers shoot at him when he was unarmed and he did not even try to attack them? If they really thought he was a kidnapper, they could have shot him in the leg.”
The victim’s wife, 28-year-old Shafia, did not actually see the paramilitary troops shooting her husband. “I did not see anything as I had my head down the whole time. My husband was hitting me and I was on the ground with my head down.”
He had called her to Nagan Chowrangi to sort out a domestic issue. The couple had filed for divorce and were living separately.
Angry witnesses
The firing at the couple angered the people who had witnessed the incident. They staged a protest against the paramilitary force at the site of the shooting, pelted vehicles with stones and burnt tyres, suspending traffic.
The Rangers men reportedly vanished from the scene. “We asked them (the Rangers) not to open fire, telling them that it was a scuffle between a husband and his wife, but one of them still fired the shot,” one witness, Danish Rafique, told The Express Tribune. “The Rangers did not even allow us to take the victims to the hospital until the crowd threw stones at them.”
Another ‘extra-judicial killing’
Zeeshan is not the first unarmed man killed by the paramilitary force in Karachi. Three similar incidents have occurred in the metropolis during the last three years where unarmed citizens, Sarfaraz Shah, Ghulam Haider and Mureed alias Murad, were shot and killed by them.
Former chief justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry had taken the suo motu notice of the previous cases. An anti-terrorism court (ATC) had announced the judgment in the Sarfaraz Shah case. Another ATC has reserved the verdict in the extrajudicial killing of Haider, while the case of the murder of Mureed, a taxi driver, is still pending before the ATC.
The legal heirs of Sarfaraz and Mureed have pardoned the suspects and reached a compromise with the paramilitary force. The Sindh High Court, however, rejected the comprise application in the Sarfaraz Shah case and upheld the punishment of four convicts, while acquitted one officer due to lack of evidence.
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