GUJRAT, June 3: Waqar Haider alias Bilay Shah, the principal accused of the Madina Syedan incident in which 14 people were murdered last month, died at a hospital in Lahore on Wednesday night.

Bilay Shah had sustained critical bullet wounds and had been unconscious since May 15, the day the incident occurred. Initially, Bilay Shah was taken to the local DHQ Hospital from where his relatives shifted him to a private hospital in Lahore due to fear of arrest. Later, the police raided the hospital on Jail Road and arrested him.

His mother had filed a writ petition in the Lahore High Court in which she stated that her son had been picked up by the police in Madina Syedan murder cases while he was not nominated in the FIR.

However, the LHC disposed of the writ petition in favour of police when it informed the court that the complainant had nominated him in the supplementary FIR. In the meanwhile, former Zila Council member Altaf Doga, the elder brother of slain Bila Marrarr Puria, came forward with the statement that EDO (Health) Dr Talat Shah had given powerful tranquillizer to Bilay Shah to show him in critical condition.

He said Bilay Shah was conscious when police had arrested him. He called upon the higher authorities concerned to immediately transfer the EDO (Health). However, the EDO had denied the charges at that time. Since then, Bilay Shah was under treatment at the hospital in Lahore, but he succumbed to his injuries on Wednesday night.

Bilay Shah was an expatriate and a nationality holder of England, but he had settled his business in Canada. His father Muhammad Akram Shah was a retired headmaster of the Government Zamindar High School.

Bilay Shah was recruited in the Army as a commissioned officer but he quit it in the early 80s when he was getting training at Kakool. At that time one of his uncles, Syed Azam Shah advocate, was murdered by the Muhammad Shah group of the Madina Syedan.

Bilay Shah came back to take revenge of the murder of his uncle without completing the training at the academy, one of his old friends told Dawn on Thursday. Later, Bilay Shah had shot dead five members of the Muhammad Shah group.