The Supreme Court on Friday expressed annoyance over the killing of a taxi driver in Karachi by Rangers. It issued directions to the Sindh police to submit a challan in the concerned court within one week. Taxi driver Murid Abbas was shot dead in Karachi's Gulistan-i-Jauhar locality on July 16, 2013 when he allegedly failed to stop his vehicle by ignoring Rangers personnel.
Hearing a suo motu notice case regarding firing by Rangers on a civilian in Karachi, a three-judge bench of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry issued directives to the Prosecutor General Sindh to get the detail and submit it before the court on the next hearing.
Appearing on behalf of DG Rangers, Shahid Bajwa informed the bench that four Rangers involved in the firing had been handed over to police for interrogation and a Joint Investigation Team had also been constituted to investigate the matter. He submitted that the wife of the deceased had registered an FIR; to which the Chief Justice said the DG Rangers should himself have registered the case.
The court noted that an incident of similar nature took place in Karachi two years ago when a Ranger in Shah Faisal Colony killed an unarmed civilian. Bajawa said that compensation would be given to the wife of the deceased. The paramilitary force had to face extreme public backlash in 2011 when local TV channels aired footage of Rangers personnel shooting dead Sarfraz Shah, an unarmed civilian, at point blank range in a public park in Karachi.
A local court subsequently found one paramilitary soldier guilty of murder and sentenced him to death and handed life terms to five other soldiers and a civilian for their involvement in Shah's killing. The case had marked the first time that a civilian court in Pakistan had sentenced to death a serving member of the paramilitary force. The hearing of case was adjourned till July 26.
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