SP Tahir Dawar was abducted from his home in Islamabad on 26 October and found dead on 13 November in Afghanistan.

New Delhi: A 23-year veteran of the Pakistan police force is abducted from outside his house in the capital while out for an evening stroll. For over two weeks, he is held in captivity and reportedly tortured.

Then, his body turns up roughly 300 km from his abduction site, across a tense international border, in Afghanistan.

It’s a murky murder that has jolted the five-month-old Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government of Prime Minister Imran Khan and threatens to strain the already fraught relationship between Islamabad and Kabul, and possibly even New Delhi.

It doesn’t help that the victim, Peshawar superintendent of police (SP) Tahir Khan Dawar, is said to have been a supporter of the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement, a campaign moulded by allegations of a ruthless military crackdown on the community in the name of fighting terrorism.

Khan has now tasked state interior minister Shehryar Afridi with the inquiry into Dawar’s death.

ThePrint takes you through the twists and turns that have followed the death of the 49-year-old police officer, a native of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa described by acquaintances as a brave man.

Abducted on a stroll

Dawar’s body was found less than a month before his 50th birthday. According to a profile in the Pakistan daily Dawn, Dawar was born on 4 December 1968 in north Waziristan’s Khaddi village. Dawar, who is said to have survived two terror attacks in the line of duty, is reportedly survived by his wife, children and elderly mother.

When he was abducted by unidentified assailants on 26 October, he was at home on leave.

He left his house for a stroll around 7 pm. When he wasn’t back by 7.45, his family got worried and tried calling him, only to find his phone switched off. They then got in touch with Islamabad police.

Less than three weeks later, on 13 November, locals in Nangarhar, Afghanistan, found his body near the Pakistan border.

Afghanistan reportedly refused to hand over the body to Pakistani officials, and only yielded when a tribal delegation led by Dawar’s cousin Mohsin Dawar, a member of the Pakistan National Assembly (MNA), stepped in. Afridi as well as a minister of the PTI government in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa were also present as the body was handed over at the Torkham border.

The SP was buried Thursday.

The gory viral image

The idea that the SP may have been killed first took root when purported photographs of his body, bruised and battered, went viral earlier this week. This was a day before the Pakistan authorities confirmed his death.

The image showed a note in Pashto placed on his body, with some reports claiming that it was left there by a local affiliate of the so-called Islamic State to claim responsibility for the murder.

 

 

The note reportedly said the “cop [Dawar] who had arrested and killed several militants has met his fate”, and also threatened more similar attacks.

After the image went viral, Afghan journalist Bashir Ahmad Gwakh tweeted Tuesday that any involvement of IS would put Pakistan on sticky ground, as the “authorities… have been denying ISIS presence” in the country.

 

Government’s ‘obscure’ response

The Pakistan government had, at first, refused to acknowledge the viral image, saying it might as well be a Photoshop job.

“It is a matter of national security and someone’s life, and cannot be discussed on an open forum,” interior minister Afridi was quoted as saying. He said the image might be “fake” given that a cyber attack was being waged on Pakistan.

It was only early Wednesday that the Pakistan foreign ministry confirmed that Dawar had in fact been found dead in Afghanistan.

“The Afghan side has confirmed that the service card of superintendent of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa police Mr Tahir Khan Dawar has also been recovered with the body,” the statement added.

The Pakistan government has also been accused of not pursuing his abduction aggressively, especially on account of the administration’s silence. However, as Dawn noted in an editorial Thursday, the secrecy of the investigation was likely meant to protect Dawar’s life. However, the paper argued that the “government ought to have also considered the cost of excessive secrecy”.

Worrying questions

Several intellectuals and activists have raised questions over how a senior police officer could be abducted from Islamabad, believed to be one of Pakistan’s safest cities, and then taken across the border.

The Dawn editorial cited above listed the chain of events that led to Dawar’s death and sought to point out that their “implications for the security of the region are deeply troubling”.

Lahore-based human rights activist Gul Bukhari tweeted a write-up from the Af-Pak-focused news portal Gandhara, where MNA Mohsin Dawar is quoted as raising questions about the circumstances of the SP’s death.

“There are hundreds of [surveillance] cameras in Islamabad and there are numerous check posts between Islamabad and the Afghan border [nearly 250 kilometres away],” he said, “Ordinary citizens are humiliated daily along these check posts, but how can no one notice a kidnapped senior police officer?”

 

 

Possible face-off with Afghanistan, India

The murder of the SP and the discovery of his border in Afghanistan has emerged as a fresh flashpoint between the two uneasy neighbours, who routinely trade blame for encouraging terrorism in the restive region.

This was reflected in Pakistan military spokesperson Major General Asif Ghafoor’s tweet Thursday that this incident indicates involvement of “more than a terrorist organisation in Afgh”.

He also appealed to the neighbouring country to maintain “bilateral border security coordination” so that Afghanistan’s territory cannot be used to stage attacks against Pakistan.

Other voices, too, have suggested an external role, pointing to the possible involvement of the Afghan and Indian intelligence agencies — the National Directorate of Security and the Research & Analysis Wing, respectively — and arguing that any trigger for Pashtun protests is likely to help the RAW, the NDS and “hidden hands keep creating the divide within the ranks of Pashtoon [sic] against Pakistan”.