Grandfather recounts aftermath of fatal Pakistani police shooting of Perth girl Hania Ahmed

What started as a peaceful night unravelled into a family’s worst nightmare with a midnight phone call from a hospital. 

The grandfather of nine-year-old Australian girl Hania Ahmed has recounted the hours that followed her fatal shooting by police in Pakistan, after the family were robbed at gunpoint.

Hania and her family had travelled from Perth to visit family.

The schoolgirl and her 11-year-old brother were staying with her grandparents for a few weeks while her parents travelled to Saudi Arabia for Hajj, an Islamic pilgrimage.

“She was a very good girl … I loved her more than my own sons,” grandfather Mazhar Hussain Chohan told the ABC.

Mr Chohan said Hania was a “brilliant student” who loved playing soccer.

The family had gathered for dinner at another relative’s house in the city of Chakwal after Hania’s parents returned from their trip.

Mr Chohan said he left by 9.30pm while Hania, her brother and parents stayed.

Just three hours later, Mr Chohan said he received a phone call telling him his son, Hania’s father, had been in an “accident”.

“I had no idea about the bullets,” Mr Chohan said.

The scene at the hospital, when he arrived, sent him into shock.

“I saw the dead body of my granddaughter on a stretcher, and my son and grandson were injured, police and doctors were working,” he said.

Robbery turns gunfight

The tragic incident had started as a robbery and spiralled into a shootout, during which police mistook the victims for the suspects.

After Mr Chohan had left, two robbers approached Hania and her family outside their relative’s home, holding them at gunpoint and demanding their jewellery.

What happened next, according to Pakistan’s Crime Control Department (CCD), is disputed by Hania’s father Adeel Ahmed.

Loading…

The CCD claimed the robbers started shooting at an officer who responded at the scene, while Mr Ahmed alleged police were the first to open fire and escalate the situation.

As the family attempted to drive away from the chaos, an officer continued firing at their car, believing the robbers were inside.

Hania was fatally shot. Her father and 11-year-old brother were injured.

Medical notes from a post-mortem examination, seen by the ABC, indicate Hania was hit by at least five bullets and died immediately.

A senior doctor at the hospital told Pakistani media outlet Dawn the bullets “appeared to have been fired from AK-47 rifles”.

‘An uncontrolled department’

The CCD was formed in 2025 to crack down on crime in Pakistan’s Punjab province, where about half of the country’s almost 260 million people live.

Even before Hania’s death, groups including the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) have raised concerns about the department’s use of force.

The CCD was responsible for 924 deaths in its first eight months of operation, according to the HRCP.

The Human Rights Research Centre (HRRC) has described the rise in extrajudicial killings as an “institutionalised pattern of staged ‘encounters’ by the Crime Control Department”.

Pakistan Supreme Court advocate Muhammad Azhar Siddique said Hania was caught in the crossfire of the CCD’s “deliberate policy of lethal force rather than lawful policing”.

‘He misused force’

The CCD has maintained one of its key principles is the minimum use of force, and said police were pursuing murder charges against the officer involved, with the department alleging he breached several protocols.

“He misused force. That use of excessive force led to the tragic demise of a little girl, and injuries to her brother and father,” CCD chief Sohail Zafar Chattha said.

He conceded a lack of training had contributed to the officer’s poor judgement.

“Now, it is the right time to learn from this criminal negligence and rectify the blunders of the individuals in CCD to prevent such incidents in the future,” he said.

Shortly after Hania’s death, police also killed the two people involved in the armed robbery in a subsequent “police encounter”.

Mr Chattha said the officers were attempting to arrest the robbers, not kill them.

“We made efforts to arrest them but they did heavy firing, and in firing, both of them were neutralised,” he said.

But Mr Siddique said this use of lethal force was systemic, and was the exact issue that contributed to Hania’s death.

“Even if somebody has a charge of terrorism, you can’t take the law into your own hands and kill them on the spot,” Mr Siddique said.

He accused the CCD of using the officer involved in her killing as a “scapegoat”, and prioritising the case because of Hania’s nationality.

“When the matter has been highlighted by the Australian government, they [CCD] took up the issue,” Mr Siddique said.

“Otherwise, in normal cases, in how many cases have they actually inquired into the protocols?”

Call for justice

Hania has been buried at a graveyard in Pakistan. Her father and brother are still recovering from their injuries, but have been discharged from hospital.

Her grandfather said both of Hania’s parents, who had migrated to Australia about five years ago, were still in shock.

“My daughter-in-law is not injured … but God knows the condition of a mother who lost her child,” Mr Chohan said.

The CCD chief has visited both the family and Hania’s grave since the fatal shooting, and has assured the family of justice.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has previously called for a transparent investigation into the incident, and is understood to have penned a letter to Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.

“Whether we get justice because of him [Anthony Albanese], or police, we just want justice,” Mr Chohan said.