[7][8] On 3 January, Naqeebullah was kidnapped along with two of his friends, Hazrat Ali and Muhammad Qasim, by Rao Anwar's men in plainclothes from Gulsher Agha Hotel in Karachi.
[13] On 18 January, his body was taken by his relatives to Tank, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where Islamic funeral prayer was performed for him,[14] and on the same day, he was buried at his hometown Makeen, South Waziristan.
Rao Anwar claimed that Naqeebullah had links with the Pakistani Taliban (Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP), Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Daesh).
[27] Rao Anwar accused Naqeebullah of being a terrorist, but the inquiry committee of senior police officers probing the case found his allegation baseless.
He said: “Rao’s touts amongst the Sohrab Goth shopkeepers came to know that Naseem [Naqeebullah] was in possession of a hefty amount of money with which he wanted to buy a shop."
"Two policemen — SI Yaseen Dhukku and ASI Akbar Mallah — picked him up along with two of his friends from a restaurant on Abul Hassan Ispahani road.
[28] The alleged suicide attacker was later identified as Gul Saeed Afridi, a 34-year-old driver from Orangi Town, Karachi, who had gone missing a few months earlier.
[29] Gul Saeed's body was found to be burned badly, but not blown up and still in one piece, although it had allegedly fell far from Rao Anwar's armoured vehicle.
[28][31] They asked how a suicide attack could even be possible in a sensitive area surrounded by the military like the cantonment,[32] and asserted that Rao Anwar had in fact murdered Gul Saeed extrajudicially.
Suggesting that it was a fake encounter, a senior CTD officer Omar Khattab said: “This has been observed for the first time that the suicide bomber, despite having himself blown up with explosives, was only burnt.
[36] Senior police officers in Karachi, on condition of anonymity, claimed that the majority of the people killed during Rao Anwar's encounters were ethnic Pashtuns.
[21] The committee concluded that Naqeebullah was innocent and had no history of militancy or criminal activity, but was rather killed in a fake police encounter carried out by Rao Anwar.
During the proceedings, Head Constable Raja Jahangir deviated from his earlier statements, claiming that he was coerced into providing false testimony.
[42] The Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM), under the leadership of Manzoor Pashteen, launched a campaign to seek justice for Naqeebullah Mehsud soon after his murder.
They held public gatherings in Islamabad,[43] Quetta,[19] Peshawar,[44] Lahore,[45] Swat,[46] Karachi,[47] Dera Ismail Khan,[48] Swabi,[49] Bannu,[50] Tank,[51] as well as other cities and towns, in which one of the main demands was to punish Rao Anwar and his team for murdering Naqeebullah.
[52] On 23 March 2018, PTM leader Arif Wazir led a protest rally from Wanna to the home of Naqeebullah in Makeen, South Waziristan.
PTM supporters protested against the arrests in front of press clubs in Peshawar, Quetta, Swat, Swabi, Bannu, Dera Ismail Khan, Islamabad, Lahore, Karachi, Zhob, Loralai, Killa Saifullah, Ziarat, and other cities.