Policeman fired after 'Kharotabad killings' gunned down in Quetta

QUETTA: Unknown gunmen Thursday evening shot dead one of the key players as well as witnesses of the infamous Kharotabad shooting incident in which law enforcers brutally gunned down unarmed Russian and Tajik citizens including women in 2011, Geo News reported.

Reportedly armed men opened fire on Raza Ali Khan, a former assistant sub-inspector (ASI) of police, while he was standing outside his house.

Khan, who received multiple gunshot wounds, was rushed to hospital where he was pronounced dead.

Back in the day, an inquiry tribunal probing Kharotabad incident had recommended punishment for the police and Frontier Corps (FC) personnel, holding them responsible for the murder of five foreigners in its report.

The report had held that the five Chechens were killed by the firing of police and FC personnel, who could have captured them alive easily.

No weapons or suicide jackets were found from the deceased men and women, it said.

The report specifically recommended punishment to FC Lieutenant Colonel Faisal Shehzad, former Quetta CCPO Daud Junajo, SHO airport Fazal Rahman and ASI Raza Ali Khan.

It said the CCPO and FC Lt Col unnecessarily used extra power and mishandled the situation by taking wrong decisions, while the SHO and the ASI were basically responsible for murder of the foreigners.

On 29 December 2011, the police surgeon and key witness in the incident Dr. Baqir Shah was shot dead by unknown gunmen in Quetta.

The Kharotabad Incident

On May 20, 2011, a group of four Russian citizens and one Tajik, (3 women and 2 men) had been travelling in a hired car in Balochistan.

They had passed through several police checkpoints and even been searched, but as they approached another checkpoint in the Kharotabad neighborhood of Quetta, they exited the car and proceeded on foot.

A previous security checkpoint near the Quetta airport had sent a message to the place that five Chechen foreigners were approaching the Kharotabad checkpoint.

The Frontier Corps soldiers and police manning the Kharotabad checkpoint came to understand that they were about to be attacked by Chechen suicide bombers and acted accordingly.

As the five travelers approached the checkpoint they were greeted with a volley of bullets and all fell to the ground.

There was a long period during which no firing was done, and during which several of the victims were still alive and moving, including the two women who were seen holding up their hands.

One of the injured women on the ground waved her arm and pleaded for mercy. It is during that time that TV crews and many officers arrived on the scene.

Then another volley of bullets was fired at the group as they lay on the ground until no sign of life could be seen. This second volley of bullets was filmed and photographed by many members of the Press and by Pakistani TV crews.

The corpses were then pulled away from each other with ropes tied around their wrists and ankles for it was feared that they wore suicide vests.

Initial news reports, that persistently only identified the five as Chechens, indicated that they were suicide bombers that were in possession of grenades and explosives and that they had hurled grenades at police.

There was even a report of a Pakistani soldier killed in the "exchange" (a likely case of friendly fire). The day after the incident, the Quetta chief of police, Dawood Ahmad Junejo, stated in a Press conference that "The five Chechens were not killed in firing by security personnel, but in a bomb explosion".

He further stated that "five mobile phones, two diaries, 48 fuses, seven detonators, a computer disc and CDs were recovered from the alleged suicide bombers.

Later the media quoted witnesses as saying that the suspects were unarmed, had put up no resistance to the security forces and appeared to be about to surrender when they were gunned down.

Officials of a bomb disposal squad which searched the bodies after the shooting told Reuters that they found no explosives strapped to the bodies of the Chechens.

They were unarmed and had no suicide jackets or explosives with them,” one of the officials said.

“Five valid and two expired Russian passports were found in a ladies’ handbag lying with the bodies,” the second official said.

An autopsy performed on the bodies of the five Russians determined that all died from bullet wounds, and found no trace of explosives on their bodies. One of the women was 7 months pregnant.