A file photo of police in Multan. Photo: AFP

LAHORE: Chief Justice of Pakistan Justice Mian Saqib Nisar took on Sunday a suo motu notice of extrajudicial police encounters in Punjab.

The chief justice ordered the Inspector General of Police to submit a report in a week on the total encounters conducted in the province and the people killed. 

The notice was taken while the three-member bench of the Supreme Court was hearing the suo motu case on the provision of clean drinking water and removal of security barricades, among other public issues. 

Reacting to the suo motu notice, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Spokesperson Fawad Chaudhry welcomed the development, saying that PTI Chairman Imran Khan had already demanded a judicial commission on encounters.  

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He added that in Kasur District alone, 137 people have been killed by police in fake encounters. 

Speaking to a rally in Lodhran on Friday, Imran said Punjab Chief Minister Shehbaz Sharif asks the police to carry out his "dirty work" and blamed him for asking the police to carry out extrajudicial killings.

The PTI chief slammed Shehbaz for politicising police and said a number of extrajudicial killings occurred in his tenure as chief minister.

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Former policeman Abid "Boxer" in a statement had admitted that he carried out killings on the orders of Shehbaz, claimed Imran.

The Supreme Court has already taken a suo motu notice of the extrajudicial killing of Naqeebullah Meshud, a Waziristan native who was gunned down in a fake police encounter in Karachi last month.