Conducting suo motu hearing on the cold blooded murder of an unarmed boy by Pakistan Rangers’ soldiers in Karachi, the Supreme Court on Friday ordered the federal government to remove the Sindh Rangers director general and Sindh inspector general of police within three days.
The court said the salaries and other benefits of the two officials must be withheld if they were not removed within the allotted time. The SC had taken suo motu notice of the killing of Sarfaraz Shah on Thursday and summoned Sindh Rangers DG Maj Gen Chaudhry Ejaz, Sindh Chief Secretary Abdul Subhan Memon, Sindh IG Fayyaz Leghari and the federal and provincial home secretaries on Friday.
A five-member SC larger bench under Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry heard the case. During the hearing, the chief justice said the Rangers were involved in targeted killing instead of stopping it. “The Rangers DG and IGP should have resigned after the incident,” he remarked.
The chief justice questioned “what is happening in the country”, adding that law was equal for everyone and no body had given a license to Rangers to kill citizens. When the CJP inquired from the Sindh IGP about the investigation made so far into the case, he said three FIRs had been registered with the Boat Basin Police Station and two soldiers had been arrested and produced before a court for obtaining physical remand.
The first FIR said the accused tried to commit a robbery, while the second was registered against him for carrying an illegal weapon. The third case was filed by Sarfaraz’s brother Salik Shah against the Rangers officials.
AGP Maluvi Anwarul Haq informed the court that a lethal weapon was recovered from the deceased.
The court expressed shock over the fact that three FIRs were lodged at different times after the incident, observing that “there must be transparent investigation”.
Justice Javed Iqbal observed it is the second incident during a month that Rangers killed innocent people. Upon a court inquiry about the person who handed over the deceased to the Rangers, the IGP said his name was Khan Afsar and he was a local and he was in police custody.
The CJP observed that it was all mala fide and none of the FIRs was correct, adding that a transparent inquiry was not possible in the presence of the Rangers DG and Sindh IGP. The chief secretary accepted the failure of the civil administration and surrendered before the court, upon which the CJP asked him to find a “way out of this mess”. The interior secretary told the court that Rangers were under the administrative control of the Sindh government and the deployment notification was revised every three months.
The trial court was also instructed to hear the case on a daily basis and complete it within 30 days. The SC appointed DIG West Sultan Khawaja as the investigation officer in the case, ordering him to complete the investigation within seven days.
Meanwhile in Karachi, only two out of the five Rangers officials involved in the murder were handed over to Boat Basin police, who presented them in the court of Judicial Magistrate (South) Nadeem Badar Qazi. They were handed over on remand until June 15. Those produced were identified as Shahid Zafar and Afzal.
