Harmful fellow having officer stripped? (7)

I believe the answer is:

malefic

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'harmful' is the definition.
(thesaurus)

'having officer stripped?' is the wordplay.
'having' becomes 'male' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'stripped?' says to take the centre.
The middle of 'officer' is 'fic'.
'male'+'fic'='MALEFIC'

'fellow' acts as a link.
This may not be correct. It may be part of another bit of the clue.

Can you help me to learn more?

(Other definitions for malefic that I've seen before include "Having an evil influence" , "Baleful" , "Causing harm" .)

I've seen this clue in The Independent.

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