After footage of the killings went viral in Pakistan, the Prime Minister was left scrambling to quell people’s anger 

Five policemen fired dozens of times into a parked car at point-blank range in Pakistan, killing four people including a 12-year-old girl and her parents.
The officers now face murder charges after the incident in the eastern city of Sahiwal last month, during which a family friend was also killed.
Those killed were identified by relatives as residents of the Kot Lakhpat area in the suburbs of Lahore — grocery store owner Mohammad Khalil, 42, his wife Nabila, 38, their 13-year-old daughter Areeba and their friend, Zeeshan Javed, who was driving the car and police said was on the country’s wanted terrorist list.

Officers then reached inside the car, around the bodies of Mohammad and Nabeela Khalil, their daughter Areeba and their friend Zeeshan, to pull out three surviving children.
The children, all under the age of 10, were later found abandoned at a gas station some distance away from the incident. One of the survivors, Kalil’s son Umair, who was wounded in the shooting, told a local TV station that the family was going to attend a wedding.
Footage of the killings taken in broad daylight by shocked witnesses went viral in Pakistan – sending Prime Minister Imran Khan scrambling to quell anger over a police culture of impunity that is now being threatened by social media.

In the shocking footage from Sahiwal, Pakistan, on Jan 19, police approach the Khalil family who were inside the white car [right], and shoot dozens of times at point-blank range 

Mr Khan tweeted that he was shocked ‘at seeing the traumatized children who saw their parents shot before their eyes’.
Thousands have been gunned down in recent years across Pakistan in so-called ‘encounter killings’ – incidents where suspects allegedly resist arrest, are slain, then later identified as terrorists to boost statistics.
Nine-year-old Umair Khalil survived alongside his two younger sisters. He said police shot at the family, who ran a grocery shop, even as their father offered them a bribe and pleaded to be let go.
Umair said the group, from Lahore, had been travelling to a family member’s wedding police stopped them at a toll booth.
‘My father told them to take our money and not to shoot their guns. But they started firing,’ Umair said in the video broadcast widely across Pakistan news outlets and social media.

After footage of the killings went viral in Pakistan, the Prime Minister was left scrambling to quell public protests and mounting anger.
Police initially defended their response saying terrorists with links to the Islamic State group were in the car using the family as a human shield.
But this ‘encounter’ was fundamentally different to others – it was filmed on mobile phones and the videos posted online.
Authorities have since backtracked as furore grew with the prime minister vowing to mete out ‘exemplary punishment’ to the guilty. The five officers were hit with murder charges and protests erupted in nearby Lahore.

Hundreds of people took to the streets in provincial capital Lahore and in Sahiwal, accusing police of killing innocent citizens in what they said was a staged shootout to showcase police performance.
Subsequently, Police Chief Amjad Saleemi ordered a probe into the shootout by a joint investigation team, comprising representatives of various security agencies.

Mourners in Lahore block a road on January 20 in protest at the killings which were caught on camera

‘People… know that a video they make from their cell phone can have far more impact than the camera of a news channel,’ said Pakistani digital rights activist Haroon Baloch.
‘Had the nearby people not filmed the Sahiwal incident, nobody would have noticed the extrajudicial killing,’ he added.
The incident is the latest instance of how phones are radically changing Pakistanis’ relationship with power.

During elections over the summer, a host of videos went viral, showing angry voters hounding elected representatives over their failure to serve their constituents.

Relatives mourn the deaths of members of the Khalil family and their friend who were shot in their parked car despite pleading with police for their lives

Students protest in Lahore against the killing of a family, who were gunned down in a police encounter in nearby Sahiwal

The Sahiwal incident comes almost exactly a year after a similar killing of a young social media star in Karachi ignited an ethnic rights movement by the country’s Pashtun community.
The movement it spawned – the Pakistan Protection Movement, [PTM] – has been largely sustained by social media and videos captured on mobiles, piling even more pressure on authorities.
But the killings continue, with analysts saying reforms are needed to challenge impunity in the police ranks.

Data compiled by the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan showed that 4,803 people were killed in these ‘encounters’ in Pakistan within the past three years alone.
‘It’s a culture of the police in Pakistan to kill people and make it look it like an encounter,’ Mehdi Hasan – chairperson of HRCP told AFP, while stating that calling for ‘The police need to be properly trained if such incidents are to be avoided in the future’.