January 19, 2008	Saturday	Muharram 09, 1429

KARACHI, Jan 18: Two dacoits looted an Edhi centre near Merewether Tower early on Friday morning.

Kharadar police said that the dacoits reached a centre of Edhi Foundation around 0645 hours. One of them kept waiting on a motorcycle for his accomplice while the other entered the building and made Edhi workers hostage at gunpoint.

Muhammad Ramzan, Edhi volunteer at the cash counter, told Dawn that the dacoit came straight to the counter and ordered him to hand over the cash. “I had thought that the man was coming to deposit some alms,” he added.

Mr Ramzan said that the dacoit decamped with Rs27,428 donations and his cellular phone.

Police probe

Police are learnt to have not initiated a proper investigation into the killing of a constable and his three friends who were gunned down in Landhi in early wee hours of Friday.

Parts of the vicinity remained tense as the funeral prayers of the victims were offered collectively at a ground in Khurramabad after Juma. A heavy contingent of police escorted the funeral procession to the Rehrhi Goth graveyard where the victims were laid to rest.

Constable Abdul Nadeem, Ajmal Khan, Sohail Khan and Asif were friends and residents of the same locality. Ajmal and Sohail hailed from different parts of the Frontier province.

Station Investigation Officer Hasan Baloch told Dawn that the four friends were sitting in Nadeem’s cab parked at the corner of Lane No 5 at around 0045 hours when unidentified attackers opened fire on them with AK-47 rifles (Kalashnikov).

“We know nothing about the victims at the moment as their families were engaged in the funerals,” he said and added that a ‘proper investigation’ into the murder could be initiated after two or three days.

The IO said he had no idea of the motive behind the incident. “What we know at the moment is that the four friends used to sit at that spot daily,” he said, adding that Ajmal could only tell police before his death that the assailants had covered their faces with veils.

The bodies were later shifted to the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre. Hospital sources said the victims had received multiple bullet wounds from a very close range as the bullets pierced through their bodies. They said that Sohail received four bullets, Nadeem and Asif received three each while Ajmal Khan suffered two bullet wounds.

Landhi police have registered a case against unknown assailants on the complaint of Nadeem’s elder brother, Abdul Mubeen.

Body found

Trussed-up body of a young man was found in Khokhrapar on Friday.

The body, found from a desolate place in Haroonabad, was shifted to the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre for a post-mortem examination.

Hospital sources said that the body was at least three days old. Clad in shalwar qamees, the unidentified man appeared to be in his 20s. Torture marks on his body suggested that his head had been hit with a blunt weapon.

Later, the body was shifted to Edhi Morgue.