BADIN: A mob enraged over a murder in Luari Sharif allegedly by a gangster ransacked and torched three houses and more than 50 shops, stalls and cabins on Thursday. The tiny town has a little over 100 such outlets and the operators of the remaining ones escaped from the locality as the arson attacks went on for hours.

According to the police and local residents, trouble began after a schoolteacher, Aslam Keerio, was shot dead and his family and relatives blamed his murder on drug peddlers and gangsters often targeting their rivals in the three-decade-old dispute over the custodianship of the Luari Sharif shrine.

Amid a charged atmosphere gripping the entire town, a violent mob stormed the houses and shops owned by their rivals. They ransacked and torched them one after the other and kept roaming in the locality streets despite intervention by police.

Badin SSP Ibrar Hussain Nekokar along with a strong contingent of police was trying to bring the situation under control but the enraged people refused to disperse or allow rescuers to extinguish the fire. They were resisting the police efforts until the last reports came in late in the evening.

The protesters were insisting on lodging an FIR against Ismail Gopang accusing him, along with his other associates, of the murder, but the case was not registered at the Model police station, though police arrested an unspecified number of suspects.

Published in Dawn, December 18th, 2015