KARACHI: Police’s Counter-Terrorism Department on Sunday claimed to have killed a wanted gangster in an encounter in the SITE area.

According to CTD SSP Omer Shahid Hamid, the man was involved in targeted killing of at least eight people, including a journalist, members of a minority community, police and workers of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement.

Acting on a tip-off, a CTD team conducted a raid near Naurus Chowrangi in the early hours of Sunday morning. On seeing the police, the suspect resorted to firing and in an ensuing encounter he was injured and arrested. The suspect, identified as Mohammed Sohail alias DC, died while being taken to a hospital. Police seized one hand-grenade and one TT pistol from his custody.

Sohail was associated with Lyari gangsters Wasiullah Lakho and Taj Mohammed, alias Taju. He had fled to Dubai to avoid arrest, SSP Shahid said.

As per intelligence reports, Sohail was involved in killing local newspaper reporter Syed Raza Ali Shah near the Abdullah Haroon orphanage in the Baghdadi area and police constable Baber in Kharadar in 2012.

Sohail, along with his accomplices, had killed two members of the Hindu community in the Baghdadi area, Qazafi Mohammed in Kharadar and two people near Allah Rakha Park in Kharadar in 2013. He had kidnapped a citizen, brutally murdered him and later threw his severed head on a street in 2012. He had hurled a hand-grenade at Allah Rakha Park in 2013. He was also involved in incidents of kidnapping for ransom.

The CTD official claimed that Sohail was ‘active’ during the brutal killing of their rival gang leader, Arshad Papu.

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Mohammed Sohail, 34, a resident of Nazimabad, had joined the Muttahida Qaumi Movement in 2007 and remained associated with it till 2010, said CTD AIG Dr Sanaullah Abbasi.

He later developed some ‘differences’ with the MQM and joined Lyari gangsters and shifted to Lyari’s Nayabad area on the instructions of gang leader Wasiullah Lakho.

He had also made an attempt on the life of MQM worker Saad Patni and in another incident he, along with his accomplices, allegedly killed another Muttahida activist and a passer-by in Gol Baghicha, Kharadar.

Dr Abbasi said that after the 2013 Karachi operation, Sohail had escaped to Dubai where he stayed with now-incarcerated gang leader Uzair Baloch, Taj Mohammed alias Taju and others for about three years before returning to the city.

Sohail had once developed ‘differences’ with the gang leaders when his brother-in-law was arrested and they were not making efforts to get him released.

Published in Dawn, May 29th, 2017