BY: Syed Fawad Ali Shah
ISLAMABAD – The Crime Control Department (CCD) of Punjab proudly issued a press release: “Proclaimed offender Khawaja Tareef Butt alias Teefi Butt, wanted in a murder case, was taken into custody at Karachi Airport and killed in an encounter while being transported to Lahore.”. That’s the official version. But anyone who has followed Pakistan’s long history of “police encounters” knows exactly how this movie ends — same script, different cast. According to the CCD, unidentified gunmen ambushed the convoy near Sanjarpur, freed the suspect, and later — in another dramatic gunfight — the same suspect was “killed” while allegedly trying to escape. Convenient, isn’t it? A man wanted in a high-profile case, freshly extradited from the UAE, dies before reaching a courtroom — and with him, the truth dies too. The question isn’t whether Teefi Butt was guilty. The question is why the State no longer trusts its own courts. When bullets replace judges and “encounters” replace trials, the law is no longer supreme — the gun is. Every extradited suspect is the State’s responsibility. If a man can’t survive the journey from the airport to the police station, then the entire justice system stands accused. This isn’t law enforcement — it’s damage control. It’s the art of burying secrets before they can speak. And we’ve seen this pattern before. Those who carry the names of real masterminds, those who can expose the handlers sitting inside political and bureaucratic circles, never make it to court. They always “die in crossfire.”.. Why? Because dead men don’t testify.. The CCD today doesn’t symbolize justice — it symbolizes fear. It has become an unregulated force, a state within a state, deciding who lives and who dies, and then calling the killings “successful operations.”.. This is not policing. This is officially sanctioned murder, masked with press releases and patriotic language. When the State begins to fear its own laws, when the police become the executioners, and when the court is replaced by a rifle — that is not order, that is decay. Teefi Butt’s death is not the end of a criminal; it is the death of due process, the murder of accountability, and the public execution of justice itself. Those in power should remember one thing: A regime that survives on fear cannot last. You can silence a man with bullets — but not the truth that bleeds from his corpse. This is not just the story of Teefi Butt. This is the story of a State that has forgotten how to defend justice and learned only how to kill in its name.
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