Lahore - Relatives and local residents continued their protest on Sunday against the alleged killing of a family by counter-terrorism police (CTD).

Authorities have arrested the officials who killed a middle-aged couple, their 13-year-old daughter and another man on Saturday on a highway in Sahiwal district.

Protesters again gathered at Chungi Amarsadhu on Sunday and blocked Ferozepur Road, which connects Lahore to Kasur, by setting tyres on fire. The protest demonstration continued for several hours and caused traffic mess in many parts of the provincial capital.

Also, authorities suspended the metro bus service as protesters took over the busy road to demand justice. Angry protesters chanted anti-police slogans in Lahore’s Tariqabad as the body of one of the victims, Zeeshan, reached back home in an ambulance on Sunday. The protesters also clashed with police during hours-long protest on Ferozepur Road in Lahore. Lawmen have been accused of extrajudicial killings in the past. In one of the most notorious incidents, a police officer was accused of killing a 27-year-old aspiring fashion model from a prominent Pashtun tribe last January, sparking widespread protests and allegations of police brutality. The officer was suspended and placed under house arrest pending trial.

There were strong calls for justice after the extrajudicial killings in a shady encounter by Punjab’s CTD police on a highway in Sahiwal district on Saturday.

One of the deceased was a friend of the family and driving the car which allegedly was sprayed with bullets by the Counter Terrorism Department officials. The couple’s two daughters remained safe in the incident that came on GT Road in Qadirabad area.

The police first described the victims as ‘kidnappers’ and then as ‘terrorists’, who had links with Daesh and were involved in the killing of ISI officers as well as kidnapping of former PM Yousaf Raza Gilani’s son.

They also claimed the deceased were killed in a “shootout” after they “attacked” the security personnel. But these claims were in stark contradiction of the information coming from the eyewitnesses, the statement of one of the injured children and the family sources of the deceased, who said the victims were on their way to attend a wedding in Burewala. Feeling the heat, Prime Minister Imran Khan contacted Punjab Chief Minister Usman Buzdar and sought a report. . The chief minister took notice of the incident that came in the Qadirabad area, some 160 kilometres from Lahore. The Punjab Inspector General of Police also formed a high-powered investigation team including intelligence officials to probe the occurrence.

Eyewitnesses strongly refuted the CTD’s version of events, telling DawnNewsTV that the three family members and their driver were shot dead in “cold blood by the police”. They categorically stated that no weapon was recovered from the vehicle after the alleged shootout and the victims did not fire on the police party.

The injured boy, who appeared to be around 10-years-old and had a gunshot wound in his leg, told the media that the deceased were his parents, teenage sister and his father’s friend - who was driving the car to Burewala.

A video doing rounds on social media shows the crime scene and the bodies lying in the bullet-riddled car after the incident. In another such video eyewitnesses and people present at the hospital can be seen suggesting that police shot the family members in cold blood.

Relatives of Khalil ended sit-in protests and cleared roads for traffic in Lahore and Sahiwal after registration of the First Information Report against the CTD personnel in which victims are mentioned as martyrs.

However, the relatives of Zeeshan were holding a protest Sunday night in Lahore by blocking Ferozepur Road against vilification of the deceased whom not only the CTD but the Punjab law minister also described as a Daesh terrorist.

They said they won’t burry the body until they get justice and the blot on the name of their ‘innocent’ relative is removed.