Baghial
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Around 2pm one day in October 2008, a convoy of police mobiles was on its way back after visiting the scene of a murder in Moach Goth, when two young men in a white Toyota Corolla mischievously zig-zagged in front of it.
Superintendent Police (SP) Rao Anwar, who had been promoted from the rank of DSP a month earlier, was leading the convoy. According to one of the police officials in a follow-up vehicle, Rao was furious at the ‘affront’ and ordered that the car be stopped, but the youths sped away.
Two mobiles, on Rao’s orders, raced after the vehicle as it turned into Baldia Town. “I followed, intending to sort things out. After all, the boys hadn’t done anything criminal,” recalls the official.
Suddenly, gunshots rang out. He soon came upon a crowd of people gathered around the Corolla; inside was the body of one of the young men he had earlier seen in the car.
“He couldn’t have been more than 18 or 19 years old. The people there said the police had killed him. It made me think, what kind of a man can murder people in this way?”
A decade later, as details about Rao’s ‘exploits’ are coming to light, the more relevant question is, what kind of law-enforcement system nurtures men like Rao Anwar?
What kind of law-enforcement system accommodates and protects cops like the former Malir SSP?
About a kilometre off the National Highway, inside a deserted two-room farmhouse, the light from the setting sun reflects on a wall pock-marked with bullet holes. Above them hangs a portrait of the Quaid-i-Azam. The bullet marks and a bloodstained carpet are the only evidence that remains of the murders last month.
“Two bodies were found here, and two in the other room,” says a DSP. Among those bodies was that of Naqeebullah Mehsud, the young man whose death in a fake encounter last month led to Rao’s suspension as Senior Superintendent Police (SSP) Malir.
Pakistan’s chaotic largest city is no stranger to extrajudicial killings, and Rao Anwar is not the only cop who is guilty of the odious practice. SSP Chaudhry Aslam of course was among the known practitioners of the tactic until he was killed in a suicide bombing in early 2014.
There are a number of serving police officials that are guilty of the same, although Rao is recognised as being in a class of his own.
According to data from the home department, aside from encounters in which Rao was involved, there were in all of Karachi at least 304 encounters in 2017 resulting in 170 deaths, down from a high of 1,719 such incidents in 2014 with 609 deaths.
The former SSP was the head honcho of a vicious cabal, including cops and local thugs, who were part of a network extorting protection money and running a number of rackets. Anyone who crossed them or refused to pay was picked up, detained and tortured, sometimes even killed in fake encounters.
Extrajudicial killing is always justified on the grounds that the criminal justice system is too weak to deal with the level of criminality that has been rampant in the country in recent years. Proponents of this tactic argue that the entire process, from the gathering of evidence to the prosecution of the crime, is flawed and corrupted, with the result that criminals are soon back on the streets again. Witnesses who dare to give evidence put their lives in jeopardy.
For example, after social activist Sabeen Mahmud was murdered in Karachi in April 2015, her driver Babu, who was sitting in the back seat when she was shot dead in her car, identified the killers in front of a magistrate.
There was no one-way mirror or any kind of partition separating the suspects from Babu.
An acquaintance of his recalls Babu later phoning him frantically, convinced he was in danger. Sure enough, he was killed on Sept 7, a few months after Sabeen’s death.
Bullet holes and blood stains in the room where two of the four dead men were found. — White Star
Bullet holes and blood stains in the room where two of the four dead men were found. — White Star
However, extrajudicial killing as an alternative to due process is no answer. “It is a slippery slope whose extreme manifestation is an individual like Rao Anwar,” says a former IG.
We must understand that the police is a component of the overall criminal justice system. Reforms in police can’t produce the desired results unless the judiciary, prosecution, jails and other arms are also brought in line with the best norms and international practices.
Delayed decisions and corruption in the courts, corruption and lack of correctional methods in jail will nullify police reforms. One can also ask what was the need for extrajudicial killing when military courts had been set up as an extraordinary measure to deal with ‘jet black’ criminals.
Retired IG Afzal Shigri believes that fake encounters are counter-productive for three reasons. “They are illegal, immoral and no one will come to your rescue when things change.”
As an example, he cites the case of the policemen who had participated in the operations against the MQM in the ‘90s and then ended up being eliminated by the party’s militants when the MQM regained its hold on Karachi.
Lawyer Faisal Siddiqi sees the reliance on extrajudicial killing as “a Hobbesian approach to restoring order. The provision of justice, or other basic services, is of no interest to the government. As the state is becoming weaker, it is becoming more authoritarian.”
After years of operating with impunity, young Naqeebullah’s cold-blooded murder was the catalyst for Rao’s activities coming in for long overdue scrutiny. However, as far as he is concerned, he is still above the law.
After refusing to cooperate with the inquiry committee set up to probe the deaths of Naqeebullah, Rao disappeared.
(The three-man team included Additional IG CTD Sindh Sanaullah Abbasi, DIG South Azad Khan, and also his immediate boss DIG East Sultan Khawaja under whose command district Malir falls.) His inner circle of 15 to 20 policemen, including his nephew Rao Amir, has also vanished, seemingly without a trace.
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court granted protective bail to Rao; he has been ordered to appear in court today.
The inquiry report established Naqeebullah’s innocence. He was not a former TTP commander nor involved in the Dera Ismail Khan jailbreak nor a gunman of Baitullah Mehsud, as Rao has alleged. The document also contains some notable details; for example, the post-mortem points out that Naqeebullah was shot twice in the back.
Among the appendices attached to the report is a statement by the station investigation officer, Inspector Nasrullah, newly appointed to the Shah Latif Town police station within whose limits the murder occurred. The SIO’s account exposes a sordid cover-up by the SHO Shah Latif Town Amanullah Marwat, who has also since disappeared.
The SIO has said that when he tried to probe deeper into the ‘encounter’ he was threatened that he too would be bumped off in a similar fashion if he didn’t step back. The security risks are such that the inquiry committee in its recommendations suggested that the witnesses be provided protection under the Sindh Witness Protection Act 2013.
Rao enjoyed a nearly seven-year long tenure as SSP Malir (punctuated with some gaps), not to mention several preceding years in the same district, completely contrary to police rules. Even now, the locals are so terrified that no one, other than Naqeebullah’s family, is willing to speak on the record about their experience at his hands.
The fear runs so deep that the family of two brothers who were picked up and allegedly killed in a staged encounter refused to speak with Dawn even though they have since moved out of Sohrab Goth. They are convinced that elements of the deep state that have protected him all along will protect him even now, said a local.
Moreover, Rao not only oversaw the ‘police encounters’ of so-called jet-black terrorists handed to him. He was the head honcho of a vicious cabal, including cops and local thugs, who were part of a network extorting protection money and running a number of rackets, including land-grabbing, sand and gravel (reti bajri) lifting for the construction business, smuggling of Iranian petrol, vice dens, narcotics and illegal water hydrants.
Anyone who crossed them or refused to pay was picked up, detained and tortured, sometimes even killed in fake encounters.
A police official who is well acquainted with the former SP’s activities says: “Rao was running a multi-billion rupee criminal empire from his office in Malir. The district was his fiefdom. There was a team under him who located the people, taking one lakh from one, Rs15 lakh from another, dispatching some. It was total lawlessness.”
According to a mid-level cop posted at a Malir police station, who has also worked with Rao, money was the motive why Naqeebullah was picked up. “Rao’s touts amongst the Sohrab Goth shopkeepers came to know that Naseem was in possession of a hefty amount of money with which he wanted to buy a shop,” he said.
“Two policemen — SI Yaseen Dhukku and ASI Akbar Mallah — picked him up along with two of his friends from a restaurant on Abul Hassan Ispahani road. While they let his friends go, they continued to torture him even after extracting Rs9 million, demanding he pay them Rs20m more. By then, he was in such bad shape that they decided it would be unwise to set him free.”
Interestingly, while the top cops investigating the Malir cases remained tight-lipped, the head of the shopkeepers’ association in the Sohrab Goth market has also gone missing.
A DSP posted in Malir also alleges there are farmhouses in Gadap, Memon Goth and Gulshan-e-Maymar where Rao and his henchmen detained people, up to 40 at one location. “Heaven knows what has become of them in the last few weeks since Rao and his team have been on the run.”
It is a measure of Rao’s clout that — barring only one occasion in the past — even when he had been suspended as SSP, an official of his choice was appointed to his post to keep his seat warm. The stand-in used to be Dr Mohammed Najeeb Khan, SP Malir, who after Rao’s reinstatement would revert to his previous position as SP.
Even the Sindh chief minister was helpless before a policeman who knew he was more powerful than even the province’s top executive. After being suspended for arresting MQM leader Izharul Hassan, he challenged his suspension in court. He was reinstated a few weeks later.
No one seems to doubt that SSP Adeel Chandio, a well-reputed officer who has been posted in Rao’s place, wants to weed out the corruption in Malir police. (Although Rao was technically an SP, he had been given an SSP’s charge — another perk of being an instrument of the deep state.) “I hold an open kachehri for two hours every day,” says SSP Adeel. “So firstly, I’m making the SSP’s office more accessible to the public, and secondly I won’t allow illegal activities in my area that harm either the government or the people”.
To that end, he says, he had 55 police personnel transferred out immediately since he came in, including all the SHOs in Malir.
(District Malir is the largest of Karachi’s six districts and has 12 police stations. However, four police stations in district East and one in district West also fall under the SSP Malir’s jurisdiction, making for a total of 17.)
Superintendent Police (SP) Rao Anwar, who had been promoted from the rank of DSP a month earlier, was leading the convoy. According to one of the police officials in a follow-up vehicle, Rao was furious at the ‘affront’ and ordered that the car be stopped, but the youths sped away.
Two mobiles, on Rao’s orders, raced after the vehicle as it turned into Baldia Town. “I followed, intending to sort things out. After all, the boys hadn’t done anything criminal,” recalls the official.
Suddenly, gunshots rang out. He soon came upon a crowd of people gathered around the Corolla; inside was the body of one of the young men he had earlier seen in the car.
“He couldn’t have been more than 18 or 19 years old. The people there said the police had killed him. It made me think, what kind of a man can murder people in this way?”
A decade later, as details about Rao’s ‘exploits’ are coming to light, the more relevant question is, what kind of law-enforcement system nurtures men like Rao Anwar?
What kind of law-enforcement system accommodates and protects cops like the former Malir SSP?
About a kilometre off the National Highway, inside a deserted two-room farmhouse, the light from the setting sun reflects on a wall pock-marked with bullet holes. Above them hangs a portrait of the Quaid-i-Azam. The bullet marks and a bloodstained carpet are the only evidence that remains of the murders last month.
“Two bodies were found here, and two in the other room,” says a DSP. Among those bodies was that of Naqeebullah Mehsud, the young man whose death in a fake encounter last month led to Rao’s suspension as Senior Superintendent Police (SSP) Malir.
Pakistan’s chaotic largest city is no stranger to extrajudicial killings, and Rao Anwar is not the only cop who is guilty of the odious practice. SSP Chaudhry Aslam of course was among the known practitioners of the tactic until he was killed in a suicide bombing in early 2014.
There are a number of serving police officials that are guilty of the same, although Rao is recognised as being in a class of his own.
According to data from the home department, aside from encounters in which Rao was involved, there were in all of Karachi at least 304 encounters in 2017 resulting in 170 deaths, down from a high of 1,719 such incidents in 2014 with 609 deaths.
The former SSP was the head honcho of a vicious cabal, including cops and local thugs, who were part of a network extorting protection money and running a number of rackets. Anyone who crossed them or refused to pay was picked up, detained and tortured, sometimes even killed in fake encounters.
Extrajudicial killing is always justified on the grounds that the criminal justice system is too weak to deal with the level of criminality that has been rampant in the country in recent years. Proponents of this tactic argue that the entire process, from the gathering of evidence to the prosecution of the crime, is flawed and corrupted, with the result that criminals are soon back on the streets again. Witnesses who dare to give evidence put their lives in jeopardy.
For example, after social activist Sabeen Mahmud was murdered in Karachi in April 2015, her driver Babu, who was sitting in the back seat when she was shot dead in her car, identified the killers in front of a magistrate.
There was no one-way mirror or any kind of partition separating the suspects from Babu.
An acquaintance of his recalls Babu later phoning him frantically, convinced he was in danger. Sure enough, he was killed on Sept 7, a few months after Sabeen’s death.
Bullet holes and blood stains in the room where two of the four dead men were found. — White Star
Bullet holes and blood stains in the room where two of the four dead men were found. — White Star
However, extrajudicial killing as an alternative to due process is no answer. “It is a slippery slope whose extreme manifestation is an individual like Rao Anwar,” says a former IG.
We must understand that the police is a component of the overall criminal justice system. Reforms in police can’t produce the desired results unless the judiciary, prosecution, jails and other arms are also brought in line with the best norms and international practices.
Delayed decisions and corruption in the courts, corruption and lack of correctional methods in jail will nullify police reforms. One can also ask what was the need for extrajudicial killing when military courts had been set up as an extraordinary measure to deal with ‘jet black’ criminals.
Retired IG Afzal Shigri believes that fake encounters are counter-productive for three reasons. “They are illegal, immoral and no one will come to your rescue when things change.”
As an example, he cites the case of the policemen who had participated in the operations against the MQM in the ‘90s and then ended up being eliminated by the party’s militants when the MQM regained its hold on Karachi.
Lawyer Faisal Siddiqi sees the reliance on extrajudicial killing as “a Hobbesian approach to restoring order. The provision of justice, or other basic services, is of no interest to the government. As the state is becoming weaker, it is becoming more authoritarian.”
After years of operating with impunity, young Naqeebullah’s cold-blooded murder was the catalyst for Rao’s activities coming in for long overdue scrutiny. However, as far as he is concerned, he is still above the law.
After refusing to cooperate with the inquiry committee set up to probe the deaths of Naqeebullah, Rao disappeared.
(The three-man team included Additional IG CTD Sindh Sanaullah Abbasi, DIG South Azad Khan, and also his immediate boss DIG East Sultan Khawaja under whose command district Malir falls.) His inner circle of 15 to 20 policemen, including his nephew Rao Amir, has also vanished, seemingly without a trace.
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court granted protective bail to Rao; he has been ordered to appear in court today.
The inquiry report established Naqeebullah’s innocence. He was not a former TTP commander nor involved in the Dera Ismail Khan jailbreak nor a gunman of Baitullah Mehsud, as Rao has alleged. The document also contains some notable details; for example, the post-mortem points out that Naqeebullah was shot twice in the back.
Among the appendices attached to the report is a statement by the station investigation officer, Inspector Nasrullah, newly appointed to the Shah Latif Town police station within whose limits the murder occurred. The SIO’s account exposes a sordid cover-up by the SHO Shah Latif Town Amanullah Marwat, who has also since disappeared.
The SIO has said that when he tried to probe deeper into the ‘encounter’ he was threatened that he too would be bumped off in a similar fashion if he didn’t step back. The security risks are such that the inquiry committee in its recommendations suggested that the witnesses be provided protection under the Sindh Witness Protection Act 2013.
Rao enjoyed a nearly seven-year long tenure as SSP Malir (punctuated with some gaps), not to mention several preceding years in the same district, completely contrary to police rules. Even now, the locals are so terrified that no one, other than Naqeebullah’s family, is willing to speak on the record about their experience at his hands.
The fear runs so deep that the family of two brothers who were picked up and allegedly killed in a staged encounter refused to speak with Dawn even though they have since moved out of Sohrab Goth. They are convinced that elements of the deep state that have protected him all along will protect him even now, said a local.
Moreover, Rao not only oversaw the ‘police encounters’ of so-called jet-black terrorists handed to him. He was the head honcho of a vicious cabal, including cops and local thugs, who were part of a network extorting protection money and running a number of rackets, including land-grabbing, sand and gravel (reti bajri) lifting for the construction business, smuggling of Iranian petrol, vice dens, narcotics and illegal water hydrants.
Anyone who crossed them or refused to pay was picked up, detained and tortured, sometimes even killed in fake encounters.
A police official who is well acquainted with the former SP’s activities says: “Rao was running a multi-billion rupee criminal empire from his office in Malir. The district was his fiefdom. There was a team under him who located the people, taking one lakh from one, Rs15 lakh from another, dispatching some. It was total lawlessness.”
According to a mid-level cop posted at a Malir police station, who has also worked with Rao, money was the motive why Naqeebullah was picked up. “Rao’s touts amongst the Sohrab Goth shopkeepers came to know that Naseem was in possession of a hefty amount of money with which he wanted to buy a shop,” he said.
“Two policemen — SI Yaseen Dhukku and ASI Akbar Mallah — picked him up along with two of his friends from a restaurant on Abul Hassan Ispahani road. While they let his friends go, they continued to torture him even after extracting Rs9 million, demanding he pay them Rs20m more. By then, he was in such bad shape that they decided it would be unwise to set him free.”
Interestingly, while the top cops investigating the Malir cases remained tight-lipped, the head of the shopkeepers’ association in the Sohrab Goth market has also gone missing.
A DSP posted in Malir also alleges there are farmhouses in Gadap, Memon Goth and Gulshan-e-Maymar where Rao and his henchmen detained people, up to 40 at one location. “Heaven knows what has become of them in the last few weeks since Rao and his team have been on the run.”
It is a measure of Rao’s clout that — barring only one occasion in the past — even when he had been suspended as SSP, an official of his choice was appointed to his post to keep his seat warm. The stand-in used to be Dr Mohammed Najeeb Khan, SP Malir, who after Rao’s reinstatement would revert to his previous position as SP.
Even the Sindh chief minister was helpless before a policeman who knew he was more powerful than even the province’s top executive. After being suspended for arresting MQM leader Izharul Hassan, he challenged his suspension in court. He was reinstated a few weeks later.
No one seems to doubt that SSP Adeel Chandio, a well-reputed officer who has been posted in Rao’s place, wants to weed out the corruption in Malir police. (Although Rao was technically an SP, he had been given an SSP’s charge — another perk of being an instrument of the deep state.) “I hold an open kachehri for two hours every day,” says SSP Adeel. “So firstly, I’m making the SSP’s office more accessible to the public, and secondly I won’t allow illegal activities in my area that harm either the government or the people”.
To that end, he says, he had 55 police personnel transferred out immediately since he came in, including all the SHOs in Malir.
(District Malir is the largest of Karachi’s six districts and has 12 police stations. However, four police stations in district East and one in district West also fall under the SSP Malir’s jurisdiction, making for a total of 17.)
