Karachi: The Sindh High Court (SHC) on Monday accepted a petition seeking an investigation into the the alleged ‘fake’ police encounters carried out by former Malir Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Rao Anwar.

The high court issued notices to Anwar, Sindh Inspector General of Police (IGP) A.D. Khowaja and Home Secretary Sohail Anwar Siyal along with other high ranking officials to appear before the court on February 20.

Anwar, who is under scrutiny over his alleged involvement in the extrajudicial killing of Waziristan native Naqeebullah Mehsud, earlier failed to appear before the Sindh IGP and the National Commission for Human Rights.

A day earlier, a notification was issued by SP Investigation East Abid Qaimkhani summoning the beleaguered Anwar to appear before the IG and the Commission at 10.30am on Monday.

High-ranking police officials had arrived at the Central Police Office and waited for Anwar and four other officials who had been summoned. However, as the time given passed without any sign of Anwar or the other four, IGP Khowaja and the police officials left the office.

On Sunday, speaking to DawnNews, Rao had insisted that he had nothing to do with the incident “even if it was proved as a staged encounter”. “I did not mess up the case,” he had said. “Neither I picked up Mehsud, nor interrogated him.”

He said he had given names of two policemen — Ali Akbar and Faisal — to the inquiry committee when he first appeared before it on Friday. “These two police officers may have detained Mehsud, treated him as a terrorist and killed him with three other ‘genuine terrorists’,” he had said, adding that he had visited the scene “after the encounter” to raise the morale of the police team.

“The police party might have misled me,” he told DawnNews.

Referring to a police ‘encounter’ on Saturday on Karachi’s Sharea Faisal, he claimed that even the IGP was “misled” by a police team that killed an innocent passer-by, who was the only brother of five sisters. IGP Khowaja had announced a reward of Rs20,000 (Dh663) for the policemen who had taken part in the operation and nabbed two robbers.