KARACHI: A man was shot dead and two others were wounded in Pak Colony on Sunday, officials said.

Suspected gangsters attacked a drug den being run by an alleged gangster identified as Majid at the bank of Lyari River in Old Golimar, in which three people received critical bullet injuries, SITE SP Asif Ahmed Bughio said. The injured were taken to the Civil Hospital Karachi and the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital, where one of them was pronounced dead on arrival.

The SP said that the incident appeared to be an outcome of fighting between ‘rival gangs’ in the locality. It prompted the police to take a targeted action in the congested locality of the Old Golimar, he added.

‘Gangster’ killed in Lyari

A suspected gangster was shot dead in an ‘encounter’ in Lyari on late Saturday night following a grenade attack within the same vicinity in which 12 people were injured, police said.

A police party on a tip-off that five suspects were “waiting for their party to deliver contraband in Tughlaq Lane of Rangiwara within the remit of the Chakiwara police station” conducted a targeted raid there.

On seeing the police, the suspects opened fire on them upon which the police returned fire and in the ensuing encounter one ‘drug supplier’ linked with the Baba Ladla-led gang was killed while his four accomplices managed to escape leaving behind four pistols, said City SSP Adeel Hussain Chandio.

Later the Chakiwara police officer identified the deceased as 30-year-old Muslim Umer.

“He was the right hand man of Zahid Ladla, who has assumed the leadership of the gang formerly led by his brother Baba Ladla, who was recently killed by Rangers in Lyari,” said the officer.

The police claimed to have seized 18 kilograms of hashish (charas) from his possession, which was supposed to be sold there.

Earlier, gangsters threw a hand grenade in Singulane-II of Chakiwara in which 12 people were injured.

The incident occurred when the people were sitting outside their homes because electricity had gone out.

The City SSP claimed that gangsters were involved in the grenade attack and their motive appeared to be to spread chaos there.

However, another police officer, who wished not to be named, told Dawn that dens of gambling and charas were main source of income for gangsters in Singulane, Rangiwara and other areas where the law enforcers had taken ‘strict’ action recently to ban such illegal activities.

The officer added that after the police’s action against such dens, the gangsters wanted to create disturbance for the police by resorting to grenade attacks and firing particularly at a time when the electricity had gone out in the area.

Published in Dawn, March 27th, 2017