June 17, 2026
By Rehan Piracha
LAHORE
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has called for a transparent investigation into the killing of nine-year-old Haniya Ahmed, a Pakistani-Australian girl shot dead in Chakwal on June 10 — allegedly by an official of Punjab’s Crime Control Department (CCD) — as the girl’s injured father has cast serious doubt on the law enforcement agency’s account of events and drawn fresh scrutiny to its controversial record of extrajudicial killings across the province.
Expressing dissatisfaction with the ongoing police investigation, Adeel Ahmed, in an audio interview with Australian broadcaster SBS Urdu on June 15, claimed that four CCD personnel riding two motorcycles chased and fired indiscriminately at his vehicle, while the robbers had not initially opened fire.
In the interview, Adeel Ahmed said he is a resident of Perth, Australia, and had returned to Pakistan with his family on June 10 after performing Hajj.
According to his audio interview, the family was visiting the home of his wife’s uncle in Chakwal when two armed men on motorcycles intercepted them as he was parking his car. “Give us everything,” the robbers reportedly demanded.
What followed, as described in the audio, was chaotic and deadly. Ahmed says the family was complying with the robbers order when CCD personnel opened fire — not on the suspects, but on the family’s vehicle. His daughter Hania, nine years and two months old, was shot three to four times and died before reaching the hospital. His eleven-year-old son Ifan was shot twice. Ahmed himself was struck in the arm.
“CCD fired so much that even the brakes of our car failed,” Ahmed says in the interview, adding that the robbers fired back only after CCD opened fire, and then fled. “First CCD fired. The thieves did not fire first.”
Ahmed says he drove the car to hospital while injured, and credits that decision with saving the rest of his family. “If I had not driven the car away, he would have killed us all.”
The audio interview was published and broadcast across major Pakistani newspapers and news channels. The CCD has not responded to the specific assertion — made in the interview — that multiple officials, not one, were involved in the firing.
Australia demands accountability
Responding to a reporter’s question about the killing, Prime Minister Albanese was unequivocal.
“My heart goes out to the family and friends, and indeed the Pakistani-Australian community will be really feeling this today,” he said. “A nine-year-old girl visiting Pakistan with her family should have been a time of joy, and these circumstances do need to be examined — in a transparent way, so that everyone can know. The family, most importantly, but others as well. And Australia expects transparency and a proper investigation of these circumstances,” he told reporters at a press conference on June 15.
Albanese also confirmed that other family members had been injured in what he called “dire” circumstances. Officials from the Australian High Commission in Islamabad visited the family following the incident and are expected to follow up.
CCD acknowledged serious operational lapses
Under mounting domestic and international pressure, the CCD has moved quickly — at least procedurally.
In a statement issued on June 14 via its official social media channels, the department offered condolences and said the officer involved had been suspended, arrested, and produced before a court. An FIR — including charges of murder — was registered on the complaint of Haniya’s father. Forensic evidence, including the officer’s weapon and spent cartridges, has been secured.
The department’s statement described the incident as the result of a fatal error in judgment: the officer allegedly mistook the victims’ vehicle for the suspects’ getaway car and opened fire. “This erroneous decision resulted in the tragic death of 10-year-old Hania and injuries to her father and brother,” the statement read, adding that the officer’s conduct represented “a grave deviation” from established SOPs and the legal standards governing the use of force.
On June 15, CCD Regional Officer Shah Meer Khalid elaborated further at a press conference in Lahore. He confirmed that the target was not properly identified before firing, and that officers discharged their weapons directly at the vehicle rather than targeting its tyres as protocol requires. “The prescribed SOPs were not followed in the Chakwal incident,” he said, promising that the challan would be submitted to court within 72 hours.
A day earlier, CCD chief Sohail Zafar Chatha visited the family in Chakwal and met with her grandfather. “We will correct the mistake we made,” he said, pledging a fair investigation and a zero-tolerance policy going forward.
A pattern of impunity
For human rights observers, however, the Chakwal killing is not an isolated lapse — it is the predictable consequence of a systemic problem.
In February, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) released a fact-finding report titled ‘The CCD’s Role in Punjab’, concluding that the department had adopted a deliberate policy of staged encounters — in many cases amounting to extrajudicial killings — that fundamentally undermines the rule of law and constitutional protections in Punjab.
The report was prompted by the CCD’s record in just its first eight months of operation in 2025, during which the HRCP documented approximately a thousand deaths of suspects in police encounters.
Farah Zia, director of the HRCP and one of the report’s authors, said the killing of Hania Ahmed was a foreseeable result of that climate of impunity.
“The killing of a nine-year old girl in Chakwal by the CCD officials following an encounter with the robbers is a really unfortunate incident and should be impartially investigated and the concerned persons brought to justice,” she told Voicepk. Given the attention this issue has attracted both nationally and internationally, chances are that there will be some accountability of the individuals responsible in this one particular case, Zia added.
“HRCP had documented about a thousand deaths of suspects in police encounters by the CCD in eight months, soon after its creation in 2025. It then conducted a fact finding mission and produced an exhaustive report early this year, indicating that these were staged or extrajudicial encounters. It pointed at the grave implications for rule of law, due process and fair trial, in violation of Pakistan’s own domestic laws as well as its international obligations.
Zia noted that no representative of the police, the CCD, or the government agreed to speak to the fact-finding mission, and that encounters continued unabated after the report’s release. “We feel that it is this sense of impunity and disregard for due process that led to an incident of this kind.”
The HRCP report had recommended a judicial inquiry into the killings in police encounters and had demanded an immediate moratorium on the encounters, but these were completely ignored, she added.
“We hope that this unfortunate incident draws attention to this systemic injustice and builds public pressure to bring an end to the excesses committed by this parallel force,” Zia said.
Concerns about CCD
Supreme Court advocate Mohammad Azhar Siddique has filed a petition in the Lahore High Court, arguing that Hania Ahmed’s fatal shooting reflects a broader pattern and is not an isolated case. “[The] tragic incident is not an isolated lapse but symptomatic of a structural failure,” the writ said.
It cites findings by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and other credible sources documenting hundreds of CCD ‘encounters’ in which suspects were killed under dubious circumstances. This suggests a deliberate use of lethal force instead of lawful policing, the petition adds.
Following the shooting, Chakwal police said they formed “special teams” to arrest the robbers who had held the family at gunpoint, and the two suspects were killed in a “police encounter”.