KARACHI: Two eyewitnesses on Saturday picked out a suspect during an identification parade held by a judicial magistrate as the alleged killer of a Muttahida Qaumi Movement activist.

The suspect, Syed Asif Ali, said to be a political worker, has been booked for allegedly killing MQM worker Waqas Shah during the March 11 Rangers raid on the party’s Nine Zero headquarters in Azizabad.

Police produced the suspect in court amid tight security and after completing legal formalities Judicial Magistrate (central) Syed Zaheer Ahmed Naqvi conducted the identification parade.

The suspect was lined up among the dummies and the witnesses were called in one after another to identify him.

The magistrate called each witness thrice before rotating the previous positions of the suspect in the row of dummies and both eyewitnesses picked him out each time and identified him as the alleged killer.

The Rangers arrested the suspect in Shahdadpur on June 25 and handed him to police the following day for his alleged involvement in the case. On June 27, an antiterrorism court remanded him in police custody for a couple of weeks in the Waqas Shah murder case.

The police again brought the suspect before the ATC on July 3 and also sought his custody in an illicit weapon case stating that a pistol, used in the crime, was found on a lead given by the suspect and the court granted his custody to police till July 11.

Meanwhile, after the end of his police remand in both cases, he was produced before the judge in charge of the ATC-II, Anandram Sairani, who sent him to prison on judicial remand till July 21 and asked the IO to submit investigation reports.

Published in Dawn, July 12th, 2015

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