Police in Karachi killed 197 suspected street criminals in 1,437 alleged encounters between 1 January and 25 October 2026, according to police data reported by Dawn. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has warned that the rising death toll points to extrajudicial killings.

The figures mark a sharp rise on the same period last year. In the first ten months of 2025, 109 suspects were killed in 840 encounters. This year another 1,426 suspects were injured, up 67.9 per cent from 849 over the same period in 2025, while the total number of encounters rose by 71 per cent.

HRCP chairperson Asad Iqbal Butt described the deaths during police encounters as extrajudicial killings. He said a practice previously associated with the Punjab police appeared to be spreading to Karachi, and argued that public safety required professional policing, scientifically conducted investigations and judicial reform rather than the killing of suspects. He also noted that terms such as “full fry” and “half fry” had failed to reduce criminal activity.

Butt pointed to the commission’s recent fact-finding work in Punjab, where it documented about 1,000 suspects shot dead in alleged encounters over eight months. The HRCP’s February 2026 report on the Punjab Crime Control Department recorded at least 670 encounters in eight months of 2025, resulting in 924 deaths, with only two police officers killed in the same period. It called for a high-level judicial inquiry and a moratorium on encounter operations.

Two senior Karachi police officials defended the operations, saying the encounters were genuine and generally followed complaints from robbery victims. They attributed the increase to intensified patrolling, snap-checking and the expansion of the Shaheen Force across several districts. However, the official statistics did not disclose how many police personnel were injured during the 1,437 encounters, and Karachi police chief Azad Khan did not respond to questions about accountability mechanisms and investigations into encounter deaths.