Killing of Naqeebullah Mehsud
| Date | 13 January 2018 |
|---|---|
| Time | 3:21 p.m. (PST, UTC+05:00) |
| Venue | An abandoned poultry farm |
| Location | Usman Khaskheli Goth, Shah Latif Town, Karachi, Pakistan |
| Cause | Extrajudicial murder by police |
| Motive | Money |
| Deaths | 4 |
| Convicted | SSP Rao Anwar's police team |
| Sentence | No prosecutions; but SSP Rao Anwar and SP Altaf Sarwar Malik were suspended from their posts |
Naseemullah (Urdu/Pashto: نسيم الله), better known as Muhammad Naqeebullah Mehsud (نقيب الله محسود), was killed on 13 January 2018 in Karachi, Pakistan, during a fake encounter staged by the senior superintendent of police (SSP) of Karachi's Malir District, Rao Anwar. On 3 January, Naqeebullah was kidnapped along with two of his friends, Hazrat Ali and Muhammad Qasim, by Rao Anwar's men in plainclothes from Gulsher Agha Hotel in Karachi. On 6 January, both of his friends were freed by the police, but Naqeebullah was kept in captivity, tortured, and then killed on 13 January in a fake encounter in which he was shot twice in the back. Alongside Naqeebullah, three other men (Muhammad Sabir and Muhammad Ishaq from Bahawalpur, and Nazar Jan Mahsud from South Waziristan) were also killed by the police in the encounter; Nazar Jan Mahsud was shot from close range.
On 17 January, Mehsud's body was handed over to his relatives at the Chhipa Welfare Association morgue in Karachi. On 18 January, his body was taken by his relatives to Tank, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where Islamic funeral prayer was performed for him, and on the same day, he was buried at his hometown of Makeen in South Waziristan. The fake encounter sparked countrywide protests against extrajudicial killings in Pakistan.
Referring to the killings, the police alleged that they killed four suspected terrorists in a shootout. Rao Anwar claimed that Naqeebullah had links with the Pakistani Taliban (Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP), Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Daesh). However, the claims were contested by Naqeebullah's relatives and human rights activists, especially the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM, or Pashtun Protection Movement), which launched a campaign to seek justice for him. An inquiry committee consisting of senior police officers was formed to investigate the killing, which found Naqeebullah to be innocent, and declared that the alleged police encounter staged to kill him and three others was fake.
Mehsud was survived by his wife, two daughters, and a son. On 24 January 2019, a Pakistani anti-terrorism court declared Naqeebullah and the three other persons murdered with him as innocent.