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KARACHI: Trapped in an armoured personnel carrier with fellow policemen, Civil Lines SHO Inspector Fawwad Khan kept calling his SSP for help for nearly half an hour before he sustained a fatal gunshot wound in the neck, it emerged on Sunday.
It was following his death that help arrived and the dead and wounded were shifted from the strife-hit Afshani Gali area.
SP Mohib Ali said Inspector Khan had told him on Saturday morning that he had been selected again for a UN peacekeeping mission. In the past too, the officer had served in a UN mission, he added.
Inspector Khan was called to take part in the Lyari operation in the afternoon as soon as he completed the security duty for the Chief Justice of Pakistan.
“Eager to take part in the operation, before his departure, he asked if it was okay to be along the front line,” said DSP Nasir Lodhi.
Narrating the ordeal, one of his associates told Dawn that gangsters first disabled the armoured personal carrier by firing at its tyres with AK-47 guns. “Within a few seconds all the tyres were flat,” he said.
Soon after the APC gunner was hit by a bullet, Inspector Khan started calling his SSP in an attempt to convey to him that the armoured vehicle crew were under attack and to seek urgent help. However, none of the five crew members was familiar with the area and could not point out their exact location.
Sources said the gangsters, some with their faces covered, continued to fire at the windscreen of the APC in Afshani Gali and Inspector Khan was finally hit by a bullet.
Again he called the SSP telling him that a bullet had hit his shoulder. Shortly afterwards, he sustained another bullet to the other shoulder. Then a bullet pierced his neck leaving him dead inside the vehicle.
It was following Inspector Khan’s death that help arrived and the deceased and the wounded policemen were shifted from the Afshani Gali area.
The abandoned armoured vehicle was later set on fire on Saturday night.
Several cousins of the slain police officer are serving in the police department. His brother is posted in the crime investigation department of the police.—S Raza Hassan
