Canberra:
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has called on the leadership in Islamabad to investigate the fatal shooting of an Australian girl of Pakistani origin in Pakistan’s Punjab province while she was on holiday there with her family. Hania Ahmed, 9, and her family were reportedly taken hostage at gunpoint by armed robbers inside their rental car in the Chakwal district, about 300 km from Lahore, on June 10.
During the rescue mission, the robbers fired at a police officer, leading to a shootout, police in Pakistan’s Punjab said.
A cop, thinking that the robbers were fleeing in the family’s vehicle, “mistakenly” fired his gun, resulting in the death of the 9-year-old and injuring her brother and father, police said.
The Case
According to the Pakistani English-language news outlet Dawn, the Australian-Pakistani family of four — Adeel Ahmed (39), his wife Dr Sidra Khan, daughter Hania, and son Aafan (10) — were in Pakistan after performing the Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia last week.
Last Wednesday night, the family– originally from the Perth suburb of Kewdale– were going to his father-in-law’s house for dinner in a rental car when they were waylaid by two armed robbers on a motorcycle, the police said.
Ahmad called the police emergency number, who dispatched the Crime Control Department (CCD) to look into the matter. On seeing the CCD personnel reach the spot, two robbers on a motorcycle fled, and the rental car also drove off.
“As the cops saw the vehicle being driven away immediately, they took it as belonging to the robbers and opened indiscriminate fire on the car,” according to police.
As a result, Hania, her father and brother were critically injured and were rushed to a local hospital, where the girl was pronounced dead.
Australia’s Appeal
Citing the Punjab police, the BBC reported that the suspects fired first at the police officer, who has since been placed under custody on murder charges, and a formal investigation is underway against other personnel.
However, the girl’s father told SBS Urdu that cops fired first. An unverified image of the family’s car, circulating on social media, shows the vehicle was riddled with bullets in police firing.
“These circumstances do need to be examined. They need to be examined in a transparent way so that everyone can know, the family, most importantly, but others as well,” Albanese told reporters in Canberra.
“Australia expects there to be transparency and a proper investigation of these circumstances.”
The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) said the incident has caused significant distress to the Australian-Pakistani community. “We are providing assistance to the victim’s family,” it said.
Robbers Identified
The Punjab police, meanwhile, said there was “absolutely no justification for deviating from our established protocols”. They said the two suspects who tried to rob the family have also been identified.
Identified as Muhammad Abbas and Muhammad Fayyaz, they were shot dead in a police encounter while allegedly trying to flee, the police said.
Police Brutality Allegation
Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf leader and former federal minister Moonis Elahi said this “extremely tragic incident” exposed the brutality of the CCD under Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz.
“This cold-blooded killing of innocent people continues in Punjab. Since the CCD was given a free hand by Maryam Nawaz, more innocent citizens than criminals appear to be falling victim to its actions, and this is a very alarming trend,” Moonis said in a post on X.
“Who will compensate this family for such an irreparable loss? Are CCD personnel so unprofessional, inexperienced, and reckless that they cannot distinguish between an innocent family and armed robbers? Or is the intelligence and informant system established by the CCD so ineffective that the real criminals manage to escape while a vehicle carrying an innocent family is sprayed with bullets?” Elahi questioned.
The CCD was established last year by Maryam Nawaz with the intention of bringing down the crime rate in the province of 130 million people by adopting a “ruthless strategy”.
During the last year, the force has killed over 1,100 alleged criminals in encounters.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has called for an immediate judicial inquiry into the killing of over 1,100 people in “staged encounters” by the CCD. “The CCD has adopted a deliberate policy of staged police encounters leading to extrajudicial killing,” it claimed.
