April 30, 2008	Wednesday	Rabi-us-Sani 23, 1429

KARACHI, April 29: Onlookers on Tuesday saw a fatally wounded trader bleed to death in front of his furniture showroom in Manzoor Colony for nearly an hour but did not dare get close to the victim because the attackers had tied a fake bomb to his body, witnesses and police said.

They said the 41-year-old owner of the showroom, Saleem Anwar, was reciting the Quran at his outlet at around 10.50am when four bandits arrived at the shop in a black car.

His employee, Misbah, told police that two culprits entered the showroom and held his employer and him hostage at gunpoint.

He said the culprits first snatched the cellular phone and car keys from the victim. “They then took out a toy car and tied it to the victim’s belly, telling him that it was a bomb.”

Misbah said the attackers wanted to take his employer with them and dragged him out of the showroom. He said he ran to the roof when his employer started struggling with the bandits.

Baloch Colony police said the bandits tied a belt containing a fake bomb around the victim’s chest in their bid to kidnap him. They said the culprits shot and fatally wounded the victim when he struggled with them.

SHO Matiullah said the victim was shot two bullets, one to his head and the other to his chest. “We are still investigating the matter to ascertain the motive behind this incident,” he added.

The SHO said it was an apparent attempt of kidnapping.

“It was not a robbery case. By the same token, if they had wanted to kill him, they could have done that inside the showroom,” he added.

Witnesses said the bomb disposal squad reached the spot in a taxi at around 12.30pm, almost one and a half hour after the incident. They said that the victim’s life could have been saved, had he been taken to hospital immediately after the incident.

However, hospital sources said the victim’s survival chances were dim because he had been shot to his head and chest from a pointblank range.

Traffic remained suspended on the Baloch Colony expressway for two hours as angry onlookers erected barricades on the streets.

Family sources said that the victim was father of a son and three daughters. He lived in the Block 5 of the Karachi Administrative Housing Society.

Hammad Saleem, the eldest among the victim’s children and student of class IX, told Dawn that his father had dropped him to the examination centre in the morning. “He was in a very good mood in the morning and he had advised me to keep on concentrating on my studies,” the bereaved son said.