Islamabad, Pakistan \u2013<\/strong> When armed officers from Pakistan\u2019s Crime Control Department raided Zubaida Bibi\u2019s home in Bahawalpur city in southern Punjab province last November, they took everything: mobile phones, cash, gold jewellery and her daughter\u2019s wedding dowry. They also took her sons.<\/p>\n Within 24 hours, five members of her family were dead, killed in separate \u201cpolice encounters\u201d across different districts of Pakistan\u2019s Punjab \u2013 the province that alone is home to more than half of the country\u2019s population.<\/p>\n Her sons Imran, 25, Irfan, 23, and Adnan, 18, along with two sons-in-law, were among them.<\/p>\n \u201cThey broke into our house in Bahawalpur and took everything we owned,\u201d Zubaida told a fact-finding mission from Pakistan\u2019s foremost rights group, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP).<\/p>\n \u201cWe followed them to Lahore and begged for our sons\u2019 release. The next morning, five of them were dead,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n When she later filed a legal petition, Zubaida says police threatened to kill whoever remained in her family if she did not withdraw it.<\/p>\n Her husband, Abdul Jabbar, insists his sons had no criminal records. \u201cThey were working men, married with children,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The family\u2019s account sits at the centre of an explosive HRCP fact-finding report, published on February 17, which concludes that Punjab\u2019s Crime Control Department (CCD) is pursuing what it calls \u201ca systemic policy of extrajudicial killing in contravention of the law and Constitution\u201d.<\/p>\n The HRCP documented at least 670 \u201cencounters\u201d, resulting in 924 suspected deaths between April 2025, when the unit was formed, and December 2025.<\/p>\n The CCD, formally constituted in April last year, was mandated to combat serious and organised crime.<\/p>\n But the HRCP describes it as a \u201cparallel police force\u201d operating with virtual impunity, linking it to a sharp spike in encounter killings that has ignited debate over the rule of law and the state\u2019s duty to protect the right to life.<\/p>\n Farah Zia, the HRCP\u2019s director, says Punjab was historically where encounter killings first took root in the 1960s, \u201cpartly because of an already existing policing culture where there was impunity for torture\u201d.<\/p>\n She said the practice later spread to other provinces. HRCP\u2019s annual State of Human Rights reports document hundreds of police encounters each year elsewhere, particularly in Sindh.<\/p>\n \u201cThat the governments choose to apply such short-term, unsustainable and illegal measures to curb crime rather than invest in better forensic investigation techniques, community-based policing and more effective prosecution has not helped matters,\u201d Zia told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n Under the Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif, the CCD was established with the stated aim of helping bring to fruition the provincial government\u2019s \u201cSafe Punjab\u201d vision.<\/p>\n It is a specialised force aimed at tackling serious and organised crime, inter-district gangs and hardened offenders whom regular police struggle to combat.<\/p>\n Maryam, daughter of three-time Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and niece of current Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, belongs to the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz party.<\/p>\n Within weeks of the CCD\u2019s formation, a sustained rise in police encounters was recorded across Punjab. More than 900 suspects were killed in eight months. In the same period, two police personnel were killed and 36 were injured.<\/p>\n By comparison, HRCP\u2019s annual report for 2024 recorded 341 suspects killed in encounters across Punjab and Sindh combined over the entire year. The CCD, operating in a single province, more than doubled that toll in less than eight months.<\/p>\n The highest concentration of killings occurred in Lahore, with 139 encounters, followed by Faisalabad with 55 and Sheikhupura with 47.<\/p>\n The largest category of suspects killed was those accused of dacoity, armed gang robbery, accounting for 366 deaths. Narcotics-related suspects accounted for 114 deaths, robbery suspects 138, and those accused in murder cases, 99.<\/p>\n Drawing on multiple police reports filed after the killings, the commission describes how a CCD team typically intercepts suspects, almost invariably on motorcycles and described as moving \u201csuspiciously\u201d, typically at night or at a roadblock.<\/p>\n The suspects allegedly react aggressively and open fire first, forcing police to respond in self-defence. During the exchange, the suspects are hit while their accomplices escape, \u201ctaking advantage of the dark\u201d.<\/p>\n HRCP notes what it calls \u201cstrikingly similar\u201d wording in numerous FIRs, including accounts in which a wounded suspect briefly regains consciousness and, just before dying, volunteers his full name, parentage, home address and criminal history to the officers who have shot him.<\/p>\n The commission found identical phrases appearing across districts, dates and alleged crimes, suggesting \u201ccopy-paste structuring rather than incident-specific reporting\u201d.<\/p>\n Official police media releases issued after each encounter and circulated to crime reporters via WhatsApp groups often also reproduce the same sequence almost verbatim, emphasising the deceased\u2019s alleged criminal record while omitting procedural details.<\/p>\n Asad Jamal, a Lahore-based human rights lawyer who has long worked on encounter cases, said the chief minister, Maryam Nawaz, has repeatedly claimed that crime in Punjab has been curtailed, suggesting the approach reflects a policy decision at the highest political level. He expressed scepticism about prospects for accountability.<\/p>\n \u201cThey seem to think that if the crime rate is lowered,\u201d Jamal told Al Jazeera, they are justified in resorting to \u201cextrajudicial killings\u201d \u2013 instead of improving investigation techniques, better resources for law enforcement and improved intelligence.<\/p>\n Indeed, in court filings, according to the HRCP, the CCD has claimed its operations reduced property crimes by more than 60 percent in a seven-month comparison with 2024, with dacoity-linked murders down by a similar margin.<\/p>\n The department says it follows an \u201cintelligence-driven policing model\u201d that has dismantled notorious organised gangs.<\/p>\n It has dismissed the HRCP\u2019s concerns, saying the commission lacks evidence of extrajudicial killings.<\/p>\n The HRCP counters that even if crime figures have fallen, the method matters. Whether crime is addressed through investigation, prosecution and a judicial process, or through summary execution, goes to the heart of what kind of state Punjab seeks to be, the commission argues.<\/p>\n The commission says families reported being told to bury their dead immediately, before independent postmortem examinations could take place.<\/p>\n The HRCP said it received no data from Punjab Police after requesting material on encounter procedures, and written requests to meet senior police and provincial officials went unanswered.<\/p>\n Al Jazeera also repeatedly contacted Punjab police officials, including the CCD, as well as Information Minister Azma Bokhari and Senior Minister Marriyum Aurangzeb, but received no replies.<\/p>\n A former senior Punjab police official, who retired in the 2010s, said two main factors drive the rise in encounter killings: an overburdened and often corrupt justice system, and political pressure to demonstrate control over crime.<\/p>\n Court delays and weak prosecutions create \u201cfrustration amongst the people and the police, and they start legitimising short cuts like extrajudicial killings\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe political government wants to be seen as controlling crime, even violating due process. This approach also encourages police to resort to extrajudicial killings, knowing there won\u2019t be any accountability for such actions,\u201d the official told Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n The HRCP\u2019s annual reports show nearly 5,000 encounter cases nationwide over the past decade to 2024, with almost 2,000 in Punjab alone.<\/p>\n Between 2020 and 2023, encounter figures in Punjab hovered below 400 annually, suggesting a persistent but relatively stable baseline.<\/p>\n In 2024, however, the number surged to 1,008, more than tripling from the previous year. The latest report records fewer encounters overall but a significantly higher number of fatalities.<\/p>\n The HRCP and independent observers have repeatedly characterised many such incidents as staged or fake encounters, effectively extrajudicial killings in which suspects are executed rather than arrested.<\/p>\n Rida Hosain, a Lahore-based lawyer, said encounter killings and extrajudicial violence are a \u201crelic of colonial control structures and military dictatorships\u201d that treated citizens as subjects rather than rights-bearing individuals entitled to a fair trial and due process.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Punjab government frames these measures as a pathway to \u2018zero crime\u2019, when in fact it appears to institutionalise another form of criminality: state-sanctioned criminality. Once state-sanctioned violence is normalised, it rarely remains confined to alleged \u2018criminals\u2019,\u201d Hosain told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n \u201cThe government may claim that the hundreds killed are \u2018criminals\u2019, but guilt must be determined through due process, not summary executions. If this violence goes unquestioned, tomorrow\u2019s targets could be dissidents, even innocent bystanders labelled as \u2018criminals\u2019 to justify killing with impunity,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Islamabad, Pakistan \u2013 When armed officers from Pakistan\u2019s Crime Control Department raided Zubaida Bibi\u2019s home in Bahawalpur city in southern Punjab province last November, they took everything: mobile phones, cash, gold jewellery and her daughter\u2019s wedding dowry. They also took her sons. Within 24 hours, five members of her family were dead, killed in separate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12617,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-explained"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12616\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}A new force, a sharp rise<\/h2>\n
A familiar script<\/h2>\n
![\"Police](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/2025-10-10T182435Z_1475691388_RC229HATPALG_RTRMADP_3_ISRAEL-PALESTINIANS-PAKISTAN-PROTEST-1771411820.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C525&quality=80\")
What the government and police say<\/h2>\n
A decade of encounters<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"