ISLAMABAD Feb 01 (TNS): An official of the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) informed the Supreme Court on Thursday that four private airplane operators have given a sworn statement vowing that suspended Malir SSP Rao Anwar did not use their aircraft to leave the country.
The development came as the Supreme Court resumed hearing the suo motu case on Naqeebullah Mehsud’s extrajudicial killing.
Last week, Chief Justice of Pakistan Justice Saqib Nisar had taken suo motu notice of the controversial police ‘encounter’ in Karachi by suspended Malir SSP Rao Anwar.
A three-member bench headed by the chief justice and comprising Justices Umar Ata Bandial and Ijazul Ahsan is conducting the proceedings today.
Sindh Inspector General of Police (IGP) AD Khawaja is in court and submitted a progress report on the case. The seven-page report states that phone records of Anwar’s close colleagues were checked as part of the probe.
Naqeebullah, a 27-year-old native of Waziristan, was among four suspected ‘terrorists’ killed in an ‘exchange of fire’ with a police team led by Anwar on January 13 in Shah Latif Town, Karachi.
Following claims of innocence from Naqeebullah’s family, an inquiry committee was formed, after which Anwar and most of the raiding police party officials went into hiding. An FIR was registered against Anwar and his associates, owing to their no-show and alleged involvement in the case.
Hearing the case at its Karachi Registry on Saturday, the chief justice had issued a three-day deadline to the Sindh police chief to arrest Anwar but the authorities have failed to nab him so far.
On Wednesday, Sindh IGP expressed his inability to give a certain date for apprehending Anwar.
“He [Anwar] is making calls on WhatsApp [to the media] and we are trying to trace their location,” Khawaja said, adding that the police lacks the technology to trace calls made on the social networking application.
Anwar, on Tuesday, had contacted media via WhatsApp from an undisclosed location and commented on a raid conducted by the Islamabad Police on a property the latter had claimed belongs to the fugitive. He had also declared that he was present in Pakistan.
Earlier, the Sindh police chief also wrote a letter to intelligence agencies and police departments of all provinces to seek their help in arresting Anwar.
A committee, headed by Counter-Terrorism Department Additional IG Sanaullah Abbasi, submitted its report on the case to the Supreme Court on Friday, which stated that Naqeebullah was killed in a ‘fake encounter’ with the police.
