KARACHI, May 23: A leader of the Pakistan Muslim League-N was shot ddead at Shaheed-i-Millat Road on Friday night.

Tariq Khan, vice-president of Sindh PML-N, was driving alone when the assailants on motorcycles intercepted him near the Medicare Hospital and shot him several times in his chest and neck, killing him instantly, as he was coming from the Sharfabad area.

“I was checking vehicles in Bahadurabad when shots were fired … We took him to the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre in our patrol vehicle,” said Inspector Zubair Mehmood, SHO of the New Town police station.

Tariq Khan was in his early 40s.

“We suspect that Mr Khan was being followed,” SP of Jamshad Town Javed Baloch said.

His view was endorsed by a local PML-N leader at the JPMC.

A large number of his party workers gathered at the hospital and forcibly brought his body back from the hospital’s morgue to the emergency ward.

Rowdy party workers made his postmortem, a legal formaility, impossible. They later put his body into an ambulance. They even bickered over the size of the ambulance and demanded a bigger vehicle.

The moment his body emerged, enraged party workers started firing in the air, creating panic.

PML-N Sindh’s president Saleem Zia condemned the murder and termed it a cowardly act.

“Tariq Khan’s killing is a part of an unending pattern of terrorism in the city. It is a message for democratic and political forces in Karachi.”

He announced a three-day mourning across the province and called for an independent and result-oriented inquiry and quick arrest of the killers.

Sindh police chief Dr Shoaib Suddle formed three investigation teams headed by DIG East A.D. Khwaja, DIG Investigation Ghulam Qadir Thebo and DIG CID Saud Ahmed Mirza, respectively.

A spokesman for the Sindh police chief said that Dr Suddle had assured the PML-N leadership of ‘full police cooperation’ and a prompt investigation to apprehend the killers.

A million-rupee reward was announced by the Sindh police for providing any information leading to the arrest of Tariq Khan’s killers.