City Reporter
An anti-terrorism court on Monday directed witnesses in the Naqeebullah Mehsud case to appear before the court on February 13. During the proceedings, former Malir SSP Rao Anwar and others accused in the case were presented before the court. Further, the plaintiff’s lawyer, after the death of Naqeebullah’s father Mohammad Khan, filed a new power of attorney signed by the deceased’s brother. Naqeebullah, who hailed from South Waziristan, was among the four suspects killed in an ‘encounter’ with a police team headed by Anwar in the Usman Khaskheli Goth on the outskirts of Karachi in 2018. Rao Anwar had stuck to the claim that the deceased was a Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) militant but a spokesperson of the outlawed TTP’s South Waziristan chapter had termed Anwar’s claim as “baseless”, clarifying that Naqeebullah had no links with the banned militant outfit. Naqeebullah’s family had also disputed the former SSP’s claim, saying that the 27-year-old had no links with any militant organisation. Naqeebullah —whose name is given as Naseemullah on his national identity card — was a shop owner fond of modelling, a relative of the deceased had told Dawn. Last year, an anti-terrorism court in Karachi had declared Naqeebullah and three others innocent and had quashed the cases filed against the four accused who had been killed in the staged police encounter. In March 2019, an ATC had indicted Anwar and 17 others for the murder of Naqeebullah in the fake encounter.
