Punjab govt orders JIT to submit Sahiwal incident report by February 19

Lahore: Punjab government on Wednesday ordered the Joint Investigation Team (JIT), formed to probe Sahiwal incident, to present its report to Chief Minister Sardar Usman Buzdar by February 19. A high-level meeting of the Punjab government reviewed the progress of the JIT, formed to probe Sahiwal incident. The JIT will also formally inform the Lahore High Court (LHC) regarding the submission of report till February 19. The high-level meeting presided over by Provincial Law Minister Raja Basharat also reviewed the evidence collected by the JIT so far. It is pertinent here to mention that the JIT had presented it preliminary report. On January 19, CTD officials had killed four people, including a couple and their teenage daughter in an alleged “encounter” in Sahiwal, triggering a national outcry that prompted the government to take the security officials into custody and order an investigation into the incident. The officials claimed that the ‘terrorists’ were killed in an intelligence based operation (IBO). Three other terrorists including Shahid Jabar and Abdul Rahman managed to flee during the chase near the toll plaza of Sahiwal. They also claimed of confiscating explosives and weapons from the car adding that officers were investigating into the matter as part of the operation in Faisalabad on January 16. Contrarily, an eye witness has told the media that the deceased were neither equipped with any weapon nor resisted officers whereas three children were also present in the car. The eyewitnesses further said that the children while speaking to them at a nearby petrol station claimed that the “police have killed their parents”. “Following the firing incident, the police left the children at the petrol station where they spoke to us. A few minutes later, however, CTD officials returned and took the children with them to an undisclosed location,” the eyewitnesses added.