KARACHI: A Pakistani anti-terrorism court on Saturday acquitted seven policemen accused in the 2018 killing of a 27-year-old aspiring model in a Karachi police shootout that an official inquiry later concluded was staged, citing insufficient evidence, according to an initial court update, while a detailed written order was still awaited.

Naqeebullah Mehsud, a shopkeeper and aspiring model from Pakistan’s South Waziristan region, was killed along with three other men after police said they were militants who had died in an exchange of gunfire. A subsequent police inquiry found that Mehsud had no history of militancy, triggering nationwide protests and scrutiny of extrajudicial killings by police.

The case also centered on Rao Anwar, then a senior police officer in Karachi’s Malir district, who headed the police team involved in the killings. Anwar and 17 other policemen were acquitted in January 2023 after the court ruled that prosecutors had failed to prove their involvement beyond reasonable doubt.

“The prosecution examined 41 witnesses, but none of them testified that these seven accused had abducted Naqeebullah, and none described the encounter as fake,” Farzana Mateen, who represented all seven policemen, told Arab News.

The term “encounter” refers in Pakistan to an armed confrontation between police and suspects. In Mehsud’s case, police initially said the four men were killed in an exchange of gunfire, a version of events later rejected by the police inquiry.

Mateen said two key witnesses linked to Mehsud’s alleged abduction did not identify any of the seven policemen, while law enforcement officials who testified about the shootout did not describe it as staged.

In written final arguments submitted to the court on Friday, the defense said witnesses Hazrat Ali and Muhammad Qasim, who were allegedly with Mehsud when he was abducted, had neither implicated nor identified the seven policemen.

The defense also argued that there were contradictions in prosecution evidence and maintained that none of the 41 witnesses had attributed a specific role to the seven accused.

The seven policemen acquitted on Saturday had remained at large during the earlier trial of Anwar and the other policemen before subsequently surrendering and facing a separate trial.

Mehsud’s killing on Jan. 13, 2018, caused widespread outrage after his family and friends rejected police allegations that he had militant links.

Anwar, who was the senior superintendent of police for Malir at the time of the killing, initially maintained that Mehsud was a militant. Days after the killing, immigration authorities stopped him from boarding a Dubai-bound flight from Islamabad, although he denied trying to flee the country.

He subsequently remained out of public view for weeks before appearing at the Supreme Court in March 2018, when he was arrested.

Mehsud’s family challenged the January 2023 acquittal of Anwar and 17 other policemen before the Sindh High Court.

Jibran Nasir, a lawyer who has represented the family, told Arab News on Saturday that the appeal against the 2023 verdict remained pending.

“To my knowledge, no other accused remains,” Nasir said when asked whether anyone else was still facing trial in the case following Saturday’s acquittals.

He said he was not at liberty to comment at present on whether the family would challenge the latest verdict.

Arab News also attempted to contact members of Mehsud’s family for comment but had not received a response by the time of filing.

The detailed written order is expected to set out the court’s reasoning and assessment of the prosecution evidence against the seven policemen.