KARACHI, Oct 6: An activist of the Sunni Tehrik (ST) was killed while he, along with other party colleagues, was trying to force traders to close their business in block 17 of F B Area on Thursday night, police said.

ST is a component of the Sunni Ittehad Council that has given a strike call for Friday in protest against the death sentence handed down to Malik Mumtaz Qadri, the self-confessed killer of former Punjab governor Salman Taseer.

Police said that a group of ST activists was trying to force shopkeepers to close their businesses in the area. The police claimed that they also fired shots in the air.

Samanabad DSP Nasir Bukhari said that a stray bullet hit Zaheer Qureshi, son of Abdul Rasheed Qureshi, who was also a resident of block 17. However, some people of the area claimed that Rangers personnel intervened to dissuade the ST activists from enforcing a shutdown. They said it was not clear as to whose bullet hit Qureshi.

An ST spokesman told Dawn late Thursday that the activists were not enforcing a shutdown. He said they were distributing handbills containing the call for the Friday protest. He alleged that the Rangers resorted to firing and that one of the activists fell to their bullets.

DSP Bukhari said that “ST activists had earlier asked shopkeepers to close their shops the latest by 9pm and some people did follow the ‘instruction’. However, when the activists came to the area after the given time, several shops were still open,” he said.

The victim was injured and taken to the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital where he succumbed to his wounds, the DSP said. The incident triggered panic bringing all commercial and business activities in the area to a close, he added.