KARACHI: Some senior current and former Karachi police officials say extrajudicial killings by the force are happening as part of a crackdown on crime in the city, in a stark admission of the practice by Pakistani authorities.
Karachi, a metropolis of 20 million that hosts the stock exchange and central bank, is beset by armed violence, and many of its sprawling slums are no-go areas for outsiders.
Two years ago, the military, with help from police, paramilitary Rangers and intelligence agencies, unleashed a campaign against armed gangs and suspected militants in the city.
Murders are down to 202 so far in 2015, compared with 2,507 in 2013, police records show.
“The efforts made by government have resulted in a marked decrease in crimes,” Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar said.
Murders in Karachi decreased by 50 percent over the 12 months through July, while no new kidnapping for ransom cases were reported over that period, Nisar said.
According to political leaders, human rights activists and families of victims, however, the crackdown has been accompanied by allegations of extortion and killings by the police in staged encounters - a practice where police claim the victim was killed in a gunfight though they were executed.
In interviews, half a dozen serving and former police officials said such extra-judicial killings were being used as a policing technique and a way to release the burden on courts. Accusations of abuses by Pakistan’s military and police are not new, but the acknowledgment by officials marks an unusual admission in a country with a poor human rights record.
Rao Anwar, a senior Karachi police official against whom the NGO United Human Rights Commission of Pakistan filed a court case in May for alleged extra-judicial killings, said suspects were sometimes handed over to police by Rangers and intelligence officials to be “dealt with”.
But he added that most of the killings were as a result of police clashes with criminals.
When asked whether he thinks innocent people were also killed, Anwar said, “This is a state of war. There are always grey areas in such matters. And when the justice system fails to convict suspects then these things happen,” he said.
The United Human Rights Commission alleged in the case against Anwar that he killed 60 people in staged encounters. The Sindh High Court will hear the case next month.
Ghulam Qadir Thebo, the inspector general for Karachi until July, said police had killed 234 criminals in police clashes since January this year.
A senior policeman, who declined to be named, put the figure at 1,000, saying a majority of the deaths were extrajudicial killings. Three other serving officials confirmed the assessment.
The inspector general’s office declined comment on the figure. Neither the intelligence services nor Rangers answered requests for comment. While police acknowledge that the crackdown has resulted in excesses on the margins, they say police are also often victims of attacks by criminals.
More than 150 police have been killed since the start of the operation, police said. According to the families of six alleged victims, identified by Reuters through cases filed in the Supreme Court and high courts, security forces have carried out mass arrests, and some of those detained have faced a stark choice: pay or be killed.
Reuters
