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QUETTA: According to unconfirmed reports doing rounds here on Thursday, Noor Mohammed alias Baba Ladla, one of the ring leaders of Karachi’s Lyari gang war, has been killed in Iran.
It may be mentioned here that the man had been reported killed by Iranian border security forces also in May last year.
Baba Ladla had fled to Iran when the Pakistan Rangers launched an operation against criminals in Karachi last year.
Some TV channels showed clips of his body from a video on Thursday. But security officials in Quetta said they had not received any information from Iranian authorities confirming his death. “We have no information about the killing of Baba Ladla,” a senior official of the Home Department said.
Also read: Lyariites unconvinced of Baba Ladla’s death
Sources which had reported Baba Ladla’s death last year said he had been killed in an exchange of fire with Iranian border security forces near the Pakistan border when he tried to escape from a house in the Iranian coastal town of Konarak.
They said the Iranian authorities had taken his body to a hospital for autopsy and made the video.
Our Staff Reporter adds from Karachi: There was no reaction to reports of Baba Ladla’s killing, according to officials and residents.
There was muted reaction, mainly because there was no confirmation of the killing.
“There was no reaction in any part of Lyari,” City SSP Fida Hussain said.
He said that the law and order situation had improved in Lyari because supposed rival gangs were no more in a position to resume their activities after 107 alleged gangsters had been killed in ‘encounters’ over the past six months.
The officer recalled that in June last year, 64 people were killed by gangsters but in the same month this year only five people lost their lives.
The City SSP claimed that incidents of firing and even the throwing hand-grenades had ended.
Some Lyari residents also told Dawn that there was no reaction to the reported killing of Baba Ladla, because in the past there had been rumours about his death, but later it transpired that he was alive.
Published in Dawn, August 7th, 2015
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