Pakistan’s Punjab province is facing mounting scrutiny after a leading rights body reported that more than 900 people were killed in police “encounters” within eight months, alleging a pattern of extrajudicial executions by a specialised crime unit, according to Aljazeera.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), in a fact-finding report released on 17 February said at least 670 police encounters between April and December 2025 resulted in 924 deaths. The period coincides with the formation of the Crime Control Department (CCD), a unit set up in April last year to combat serious and organised crime.
The report centres on cases such as that of Zubaida Bibi from Bahawalpur in southern Punjab.
She told investigators that armed CCD officers raided her home in November, seizing valuables and detaining her sons. Within 24 hours, five male relatives – three sons and two sons-in-law – were reported killed in separate encounters across different districts.
The family maintains the men had no criminal records and were working and married.
HRCP said such accounts reflect what it described as a systemic policy of extrajudicial killing in violation of the law and Constitution. The organisation characterised the CCD as operating like a parallel force, linking it to a sharp rise in encounter killings.
Punjab, home to more than half of Pakistan’s population, has long recorded police encounters. But the latest figures mark a dramatic escalation. HRCP’s annual report for 2024 documented 341 suspects killed in encounters across Punjab and Sindh combined over the entire year.
The CCD alone, operating in Punjab, recorded more than double that number in less than eight months.
Lahore saw the highest number of reported encounters at 139, followed by Faisalabad with 55 and Sheikhupura with 47. Of those killed, 366 were accused of armed gang robbery, 138 of robbery, 114 of narcotics offences and 99 of murder.
The commission said first information reports (FIRs) filed after encounters frequently contained nearly identical wording. Suspects were typically described as travelling on motorcycles at night or at roadblocks, opening fire first and being shot in self-defence while accomplices escaped “taking advantage of the dark”. HRCP said repeated phrasing across districts suggested copy-and-paste reporting rather than case-specific accounts.
The CCD was launched under Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif as part of the provincial government’s “Safe Punjab” agenda. The department says it follows an intelligence-driven policing model and has dismantled organised gangs.
In court submissions cited by HRCP, it claimed property crimes fell by more than 60 per cent in a seven-month comparison with 2024, with dacoity-related murders declining similarly.
The department rejected allegations of extrajudicial killings and said the rights body lacked evidence. Police and provincial officials did not respond to requests for comment.
Rights advocates argue that even if crime has fallen, the means used remain central. Farah Zia, HRCP’s director, said Punjab has a long history of encounter killings dating back to the 1960s, rooted in a policing culture marked by impunity. The practice later spread to other provinces.
Asad Jamal, a Lahore-based human rights lawyer, said the surge reflects political pressure to show control over crime. A retired senior Punjab police official, speaking anonymously, attributed the trend to frustration with slow courts and weak prosecutions, combined with political demands for visible results.
HRCP data show nearly 5,000 encounter cases nationwide over the past decade to 2024, almost 2,000 of them in Punjab. While annual figures between 2020 and 2023 remained below 400 in Punjab, the number rose to 1,008 in 2024 before the latest spike in fatalities under the CCD.
Lawyers warn that normalising summary killings risks undermining due process. They argue that determining guilt through the courts, rather than through lethal force, remains fundamental to the rule of law in Pakistan’s most populous province.
