A Pakistani police chief accused of leading a hit squad reportedly responsible for 250 extra-judicial killings was prevented from boarding a flight out of the country on Tuesday as investigators probed the death of an aspiring model the police chief claimed to be a member of the Taliban.

Dozens of families have come forward since the killing of Naqeebullah Mehsud, 27, to claim that Rao Anwar and his lieutenants murdered their relatives over a 10-year reign in the biggest policing district of Karachi, Pakistan’s business capital.



Officials from the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) stopped Anwar at Jinnah airport early on Tuesday. Anwar, along with other police officers, had been accused of serial fake “encounters”, mostly involving Taliban suspects.



The father of Naqeebullah, Muhammad Khan, on Tuesday lodged accusations of terrorism, kidnapping and murder against Anwar and his team with Karachi police, the first step towards expected charges being launched in court.



On Sunday, around 1,000 activists and members of the Mehsud tribe held a rally on the outskirts of Karachi, demanding the launch of an enquiry into all the alleged incidents of extrajudicial killing.

“He should be hanged in public,” Sher Pao Mehsud told the Guardian, tearfully flicking through pictures of himself and Naqeebullah at a New Year’s Eve party.

One of those hoping to attach their case to that of Naqeebullah, was 30-year-old Faizullah Khan, who said his best friend was killed by Anwar’s team while in custody seven years ago. He said that since then, while seeking justice, he had been arrested three times, forced to pay a bribe of £3,000 to secure his release, and told to stay out of Karachi for two years.

Naqeebullah, whose popular Facebook page boasts modelling shots and videos of himself dancing with friends, was picked up by police on 3 January. According to local news, one of Anwar’s informers had overheard him talking on the phone about receiving money from his brother in Dubai.

On 13 January, Anwar told reporters that four terrorists had been killed in a police “encounter”. While photos from the scene revealed three of the men’s faces, that of Naqeebullah was obscured. It was not until 15 January that a family member identified their missing relative by his hands, and media reports attracted national attention.

Anwar, who was suspended on Saturday after a police investigation found no links between Naqeebullah and the Taliban, claims that his underlings were responsible for the killing. Eleven have been demoted.

But a police culture formed around “encounter” killings is now under fierce examination. Some 495 Pakistanis were killed in shoot-outs with law enforcement agencies in 2017, according to a report by the Centre for Research and Security Studies, with more than 300 cases recorded in Karachi alone.

Residents of the city of 21 million people are accustomed to eyebrow-raising stories of clashes ending in terrorists being found dead with their handcuffs still on, Al-Qaeda bigwigs who turn out – after investigation – to be Shia, and dramatic firefights where police officers are unharmed.

Since 2009, according to the lawyer and activist Jibran Nasir, Anwar has been involved in 64 reported “encounters”, involving 262 deaths – but only one recorded police casualty.

Karachi crime reporters note that the rate an officer can extort in bribes increases with the number of “encounters” attached to his name.

“It is unfathomable that the Sindh government or security agencies were not aware” of Anwar’s actions, Nasir, who is pushing for a response in the senate and national assembly, told the Guardian. “We don’t want an individual replaced, we want the curtains to fall on the entire drama.”

“While it is a breakthrough given the public interest it has attracted,” said Saroop Ijaz of Human Rights Watch, “It would be overly optimistic to think this case will change the culture of impunity in Pakistan’s police”.

Omar Shahid Hamid, chief of Karachi’s west district and author of The Prisoner, a celebrated novel about policing in Karachi, noted that Anwar’s aggressive policing in the 90s helped restore order in the city at a time of extreme chaos, and lamented that the current scandal was likely to put “police on the backfoot for the time being”.

But he contrasted Anwar’s record with that of the Karachi counter-terrorism department, which often arrests jihadists – and is involved in shoot-outs that are not so “one-sided”.