HYDERABAD: The 18-year-old boy who was involved in the March 4 arson attack on the Hyderabad press club (HPC) during a protest died at the Liaquat University Hospital (LUH) city branch on Tuesday morning.

Sajjad, son of Nawab Ali Qureshi, was a resident of Unit-12 of Latifabad near Aqsa Masjid.

He received 45 per cent burn wounds while setting the club receptionist’s counter ablaze on the main road after ransacking HPC furniture. Flames also engulfed Sajjad besides two other protesters.

The two protesters managed to extinguish the fire they had caught, but by the time someone helped Sajjad, he had received massive burn wounds requiring him to be shifted to hospital. He was taken to the LUH’s burns wards immediately for treatment where he died on Tuesday.

The Cantonment police SHO said Sajjad was said to be an activist of Sunni Tehreek (ST), although the party is denying that the deceased was its worker.

He said that when ST local leaders were delivering speeches, their B-team was busy in the attack on the club. He confirmed having arrested five of the 19 nominated suspects in the FIR. They include Nasir aka Chingari, Shakir Doodhwala, Shahid aka Dantla, brother of local ST leader Abid Qadri, Aslam Morya and Ashiq Bunny. They are in custody of police on physical remand. He said Dantla had been previously charge-sheeted in different criminal cases.

Meanwhile, the Hyderabad Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC), which on Monday granted one-day police custody remand of five suspects, also deleted ATA’s sections in the FIR (29/16). The court observed that ATA sections did not apply to this case which should be tried by an ordinary sessions court. The Cantonment police produced them before a civil judge and judicial magistrate on Tuesday who remanded them in police custody for another three days.

The Jamiat Ulema-i-Pakistan (JUP) and the ST gathered their hundreds of protesters for a joint protest against what they described as the blackout of media coverage of Mumtaz Qadri’s hanging. During a protest sit-in that was staged a few paces away from the local press club, angry protesters climbed over the wall of the club, ransacked it and torched its furniture on the road.

Scared journalists jumped from the first floor to the adjacent Radio Pakistan’s premises, causing minor to major injuries to seven of them. The HPC’s governing body has decided to boycott all kind of political activities of the ST and the JUP.

Published in Dawn, March 9th, 2016