After looking at the title you would have already reprieved correctly that I am referring to the Thursday 15th August Story took place on Jinnah Avenue in Blue Area Islamabad. A gun man Sikandar in his Toyota Corolla, with his wife Kanwal and two kids one girl and boy reached blue area. He hit a police car first, then he took out his two rifles including a SMG and started firing up into the sky, spreading some terror at first. Later on it was nothing less than a drama, things looked like a scene from a Hollywood movie, where the man with his family was in the middle and police had surrounded him from all over. As well as media men including camera men and on scene reporters were also seem on all sides, they were accompanied by over four thousand local public, who were there to enjoy the scene like a Hollywood movie.
Police, media and people were maintaining minimum 50 yards distance from the Sikandar and his family who were in center still in their black corolla, getting in and out. Not only this the scene ran about 5 hours because for police handling the man with guns was not an issue but they feared if he opens fire on his own family or people around it would be total disaster.
There were some big mistakes happened by Police, they were never able to keep normal public away from scene, as they had not took any care about that. As the gunman’s wife was serving as messenger from gunman to police and Vice Versa, she told police that man has some demands and he would not shoot at anyone, until and unless every one stays away. This may be the reason police never thought seriously of scattering people away but they would have took care of this, as man seem a Psychologically ill. As he was endangering the lives of his children and wife, he was as unpredictable as they come, so he would have opened fire on anyone around.
Meanwhile, some TV channels traced out the man’s info including the cell phone numbers of him and his wife. They gone forward and took man and his wife live on TV and started negotiating with person in front of whole country, in fact the whole world. Person started to give his demands on live TV, these were definitely baseless, for example change the government of country and stuff. In a democratic country how could one person with couple of guns and his family come on roads and demand change of recently elected government.
He definitely was in need of mental patient seem through his baseless, unfulfillable demands, but then we would say who gave media the right to negotiate with him and broadcast his demands in his own voice over to the whole world. But then why wouldn’t police had setup some signal signal jammers to stop any voice communication. It was another fail.
On the topic of why this drama continued for hours, yes it wouldn’t have happened. Police has excuse that they cared for persons family, but how could this be, with family or not how could a person can put others in danger for so long hours. Police would have had some solution to that as well, would have somehow reached to him.
Finally, the drop scene or climax of drama was most interesting, as man apparently in no tension, he was like having morning walk in middle of crowed with his wife and two kids who were playing on grass on roadside in trees. Man seem so relax that he enjoyed a cigarette and red bull energy drink while he was endangering his and his family’s lives. But then as I said, it all came to the final climax scene where a politician and a former Member of National Assembly (MNA) Zumarad Khan apparently gone to the gunman for negotiations but he decide to this his way. He gently smiling shaken hands with the children of gunman to get closer and then Zumarad just jumped onto the gun man trying to grab the weapon but he fell down, still he was grabbing the leg of gunman who ran and successfully got some distance, he fired back on Zumarad who meanwhile ran for gunman’s little daughter and grabbed her for some cover from the gunman. His life was saved that way mean while the commandos and police fired on Skinder (mad gunman), with four bullets in his body including the one in his lungs, he was finally in custody and rushed to hospital with his wife. Meanwhile lot of people were calling Zumarad Khan a hero and lots other disagree that argument what he did was foolishness.
My point of view is little different, on one side I do acknowledge that what Zumarad did was bravery, he would have been killed in this, not so many people that chance. But still it would have been far better if police would have been handled it themselves. Even if an attack had to happen, this would have happened from a trained person not a politician who was even not holding an office at that time. I am not sure why even police and other security agencies on scene allowed this to happen, for the person who seem so relaxed they would have done some coordinated attack which would have handled this far earlier than five hours without any injuries to anyone.
Finally, thankfully there were no life loss in this whole madness. There were few mistakes which were made from Police, media and public. Everybody must definitely learn from their mistakes, specially police would have come with better plan I hope they will come with if this happens in future anywhere in the country. People must understand that this was after all not a scene of a movie, keeping a safe distance would have made things far easier for the police. Then same applies to the media which was little too much closer, I even heard officer in charge on the scene advising media to get away to give them safe distance, media was even broadcasting this but never heard him. May Allah bless us peace and nothing like this happens again.
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