KARACHI: There has been an increase of over 63 per cent in the number of people killed in ‘encounters’ with personnel of law enforcement agencies between January and February in 2015 as compared to the first two months of 2014, though the total number of overall killings that took place during the same period has dropped by 32pc, says a report.

The report prepared by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and released on Tuesday is a comparison of killings between Jan-Feb of 2014 and Jan-Feb of 2015.

Also read: LEAs killed more in January than last year’s same period: HRCP

The report says that the percentage of the LEA personnel killed during the first two months of 2015 has also dropped by over 50pc compared with the corresponding period last year.

The number of sectarian killings as well as deaths due to targeted killings have also dropped by almost 50pc each in 2015 as compared to 2014.

A total of 60 people were killed in encounters with law enforcement agencies during the reported period last year while the number of those killed in such incidents rose to 98 this year.

A total of 43 out of the 60 were killed in police encounters while 13 were killed by soldiers / paramilitary personnel and four others were killed by security guards.

Similarly 84 out of the 98 people were killed in police encounters while 12 others were killed in encounters with the soldiers / paramilitary personnel and two others were killed by security guards.

The HRCP report based on data collected from the reports published in newspapers says that the total of those killed during Jan-Feb 2014 was 519 while the number of killings dropped to 351 during the first two months of 2015.

The report says that 41 policemen and two soldiers / paramilitary personnel were killed in these two months in 2014 while 20 policemen and one soldier / paramilitary soldier was killed during the corresponding period this year.

The report says that 37 people lost their lives because of sectarian killings in Jan-Feb 2014 while the number of those killed on the similar basis dropped to 19 during the current year.

The targeted killings of non-political persons were 154 in 2014 while the number of similar killings dropped to 52 in the current year.

The number of political activists killed last year was 23 while 18 political activists were killed this year.

The number of bodies found last year was 76 while this year the number dropped to 26.

Five people were killed in bomb blasts last year while two people were killed due to bomb blasts this year.

Some 16 people were killed in Lyari gang warfare related incidents while the number of such killings dropped to 12 this year.

Nine people were killed owing to Karo-kari last year while not a single person has been killed this year on this pretext.

The report says that 14 children were killed, including two in bomb blasts, two by stray bullets, five because of enmity, one raped and killed, one on sectarian basis, etc, in 2014 while five children were killed — two due to negligence and one each owing to bomb last, enmity while one was raped and killed — in 2015.

Some 26 women were killed in 2014 and out of these nine were killed by relatives, 10 by unidentified people, five by stray bullets and one each by bomb blast and on railway tracks.

In 2015 the number of women killed was 16 and out of these 10 were killed by unidentified persons, four were killed by relatives and one each by bomb blast and on railway tracks.

The report says that eight men were killed by stray bullets and four each on railway tracks and owing to drug overdose / toxic wine in 2014 while in 2015 five were killed by stray bullets, nine of railway tracks and six owing to drug overdose, the report adds.

Published in Dawn, March 18th, 2015

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