Police in Karachi killed 197 suspected street criminals in alleged encounters during the first 10 months of 2026, an increase of about 80 per cent on the same period last year, according to data maintained by Karachi police.

The figures, first reported by Dawn, show 1,437 police encounters took place between 1 January and 25 October 2026, up 71 per cent from 840 in the corresponding period of 2025. Another 1,426 suspects were injured, a rise of 67.9 per cent from 849 last year. In the same period of 2025, 109 suspects were killed.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has raised the alarm over the sharp rise, describing deaths in police encounters as extrajudicial killings and calling for an urgent high-level judicial inquiry into the deaths.

HRCP calls for a judicial inquiry

HRCP chairperson Asad Iqbal Butt said the commission viewed the deaths of suspects in police encounters as extrajudicial killings. The commission has also pointed to its own fact-finding in Punjab, where it documented the killing of 1,000 suspects in alleged encounters over an eight-month period.

In February 2026, the HRCP condemned the Punjab Crime Control Department, saying it had documented at least 670 encounters led by the department over eight months in 2025, resulting in the deaths of 924 suspects, with two police officers killed during the same period.

Police say all encounters were genuine

Senior Karachi police officials maintained that all of the encounters were genuine and said the police department itself had suffered casualties. However, the official data does not disclose how many police personnel were injured across the 1,437 encounters, and Karachi police chief Azad Khan did not respond to questions about accountability mechanisms and investigations into encounter deaths.

The figures underline a wider debate in Pakistan about policing and accountability. Supporters of tough action against street crime argue that encounters are a response to violent criminals who open fire on police, while rights groups say the scale of the killings, and the absence of public investigations, points to a pattern that the courts and the authorities must examine.

Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, has long struggled with street crime, and police operations against suspected robbers and snatchers are a regular feature of daily life. The latest figures show those operations have become markedly more frequent and more deadly in 2026 than in the year before, with no sign yet of an independent inquiry into how the encounters are conducted. Sources: ANI; Nation Press.