KARACHI: The police and rangers have to submit a report in 24 hours on the killings in Karachi as the chief justice of the Sindh High Court has taken suo motu notice of the matter.
Sixteen people were shot dead in about 24 hours. Snipers targeted people at roadside tea stalls and others were picked off in drive-by shootings. Independent sources, however, put the toll from Tuesday midnight till Thursday morning at 22.Chief Justice Musheer Alam has asked the officials to inform the court of what they have done against criminals, terrorists and elements involved in the unabated killings in the city, said an official of the SHC. They have also been asked to state what steps were being taken to control the situation.
The suo motu action was taken by Chief Justice Alam as he heads the monitoring committee formed by the Supreme Court after it took up the violence that broke out in Karachi last summer. It issued several orders whose implementation the committee had to oversee. In August 2011, up to 140 people were shot dead.This year, however, this is the second suo motu action taken by the high court in a month’s time. On March 31, the Sindh police had submitted a report to the court, disputing the figures of targeted killings. They implied that the law and order situation in the city was not as bad as was being reported.
An NGO’s survey put the figure of those killed in the first quarter (January-March) of 2012 at 396. But the police claimed that only 47 people were targeted in these three months and the remaining were victims of sectarian strife, friction between political parties and personal enmities.The Sindh Rangers submitted a separate report on Karachi’s crime but its contents could not be ascertained as officials were tightlipped about it.In its judgment on Karachi’s law and order in April 2011, the Supreme Court had suggested certain remedial administrative measures but, according to official sources, most of the directives have not yet been implemented.The SC’s monitoring committee was supposed to meet every first Tuesday of a month to review the progress. – Thetribune
