20 January 2005	Thursday	09 Zilhaj 1425

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ISLAMABAD, Jan 19: A senior diplomat of the Kazakhstan embassy was critically wounded under mysterious circumstances after receiving a gun shot in the head from a very close range at his house.

He was surviving on life-support systems till late Wednesday evening. The diplomat, Sapargali Aubakirov, aged 45-50 years, is deputy chief of the mission of Kazakhstan and has been living alone at the house in the F-6/4 sector for almost a year. Mr Aubakirov's official car with a diplomatic number plate was found missing.

Doctors at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims) said Mr Aubakirov was in deep coma after a surgery. "Only one in 10,000 of such cases survives," said a doctor.

The doctors said Mr Aubakirov was shot from a very close range and the bullet entered from the right temple and exited from the left. The diplomat was shifted to Pims after an official of the Kazakh embassy and a servant broke open the door of the house at 1:30pm.

The capital's Superintendent of Police, Investigations, Ehsan Sadiq, told Dawn that the diplomat's servant had left the house on Tuesday evening and returned on Wednesday morning to find the house locked.

He said the servant, Ashraf, waited for the diplomat to open the door till 1:30 pm and then called a Kazakh embassy official, who went into the house and found the wounded diplomat lying in a pool of blood on a couch. Police were informed at 2pm and within half an hour Mr Aubakirov was shifted to Pims, said the SP.

After preliminary investigations, police have started hunt for two men, believed to be Russian speaking, who were with Mr Aubakirov on Tuesday night. Police took the servant into custody for investigation.