At least four persons including two women were killed and three children injured during an alleged encounter with the Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) of Punjab police in Sahiwal on Saturday, DawnNewsTV reported.
The alleged encounter — which the CTD officials later termed an 'intelligence-based operation' — took place on GT Road near Sahiwal. The CTD claimed that the operation was conducted on the basis of information about the presence of suspected terrorists, provided by the department and an intelligence agency — the name of which they did not specify.
According to the details provided by police, the CTD Sahiwal officials signalled a car and a motorcycle to stop near Sahiwal Toll Plaza.
"The [alleged] terrorists retaliated by firing at the CTD officials following which a shootout ensued. Once the firing stopped, four people were found dead, reportedly as a result of firing by their own accomplices, while three terrorists had fled the scene," read the CTD statement.
As per the CTD statement, suspects identified as Shahid Jabbar and Abdul Rehman were travelling towards Sahiwal and were reportedly in possession of arms and explosives.
"They used to travel with families to avoid police checking. Today, they were warned to surrender but they resorted to firing," read the statement, adding that the Shahid Jabbar, Abdul Rehman, and another unidentified suspect fled from the scene on a motorcycle.
"Recoveries include suicide jackets, hand grenades, rifles, etc," it added.
However, the details of the incident, as narrated by the eyewitnesses and children accompanying the deceased, differ drastically from what the CTD has been trying to establish.
Editorial: Fake police encounters
Eyewitnesses told DawnNewsTV that the four persons travelling together in a car — who happened to be family members — were shot dead in cold blood by police and categorically stated that no weapon was recovered from the vehicle after the alleged shootout.
A video of the crime scene available with DawnNewsTV shows the bodies lying in the car after the firing incident.
In another video, eyewitnesses and people present at the hospital can be seen suggesting that after the incident, the CTD personnel had abandoned the wounded children at the crime scene and went away.
It was only after a while that they came back to the crime scene and shifted the three injured children to a government-run hospital nearby.
Meanwhile, Punjab Information Minister Fayyazul Hassan Chohan said the actual picture of the incident will become clear after the initial investigation into the incident.
The CTD officials took action against the suspects on a tip-off from an alleged terrorist who had been arrested by the intelligence agencies in Karachi, the minister said.
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