250 Mehsud community members to attend Naqeebullah murder case hearing

KARACHI: All state institutions promised ‘justice’, reminded Malik Muhammad Khan, the father of slain Naqeebullah Mehsud, to a large gathering of Pashtun men on Sunday. Then his son’s killer was granted special perks while in detention and ultimately released on bail.

But get justice they will, promised the participants of the Jirga – a tribal council largely comprising members of the Pashtun community. They would go to any lengths to get justice, they reiterated.

Naqeebullah Mehsud, 27, was killed in what the police initially termed an encounter with suspected terrorists in January, earlier this year. The victim’s family members had subsequently rejected the police’s claims that he was a member of the Pakistan Taliban, saying he was an innocent aspiring male model. A joint investigation team (JIT) had later found that the four had been falsely implicated, with the court later ruling that Mehsud had no extremist tendencies.

Two FIRs were filed against former Malir SSP Rao Anwar – one by the police and the other by Mehsud’s father – for falsely implicating Mehsud.

An anti-terrorism court (ATC) in Karachi granted bail to Anwar on July 20, in the case against him for filing a fake first information report (FIR) against Mehsud. The FIR had implicated Mehsud and others for possession of explosives and illegal weapons.

This is the second case in which Anwar was granted bail. Earlier, on July 10, the tainted cop had been granted bail in the case concerning the extrajudicial killing of Mehsud and three others in Karachi.

On Sunday, the Jirga decided that at least 250 people from the Mehsud community would attend the hearing scheduled for today (Monday).

The tent set up before Al Asif Square was thronged by members of the Pashtun community. Addressing the participants, Khan said that they would wait for the state to mete out justice. “Whatever happened was shameful,” he said, adding that people say he had accepted money for his son’s murder, but even if he was offered the whole world, he wouldn’t accept any money. He assured that he would support every decision of the grand Jirga.

The head of the grand Jirga, Mehmood Khan, said that Anwar used to kidnap young residents of district Malir and allege that they were either a driver of Baitullah Mehsud – the then chief of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan – or gunmen of some terrorist organisation and demand ransom money from their families. He said that in Punjab, a DPO was transferred for misbehaving with women, but in Sindh, the murderer of 444 innocent persons was still at large.

Source: Express Tribune