KARACHI: Police on Saturday claimed to have arrested another suspected assassin for his alleged involvement in the 1997 murder of managing director of the Karachi Electric Supply Corporation Shahid Hamid.

A police spokesperson said that Mehboob Ghufran was arrested in Jamshoro and handed over to the CIA police for further legal action.

“He was an absconding accused in the Shahid Hamid murder case for the past 20 years,” he said. He was handed over to CIA Inspector Sarwar Commando, the investigating officer of the case.

The suspect was produced in the court of a judicial magistrate, where he “recorded his confessional statement” under Section 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code, said the spokesperson.

He added that the suspect in his statement said that Muttahida Qaumi Movement founder Altaf Hussain, MQM-London convener Nadeem Nusrat, Saulat Mirza, Minhaj Qazi and Sohail Zaidi had hatched a conspiracy to assassinate the senior bureaucrat.

Saulat Mirza was executed on May 12, 2015 in a Balochistan prison in the same case.

Except Mr Qazi, who was arrested in 2016 and is facing trial in the case, all the other accused have been declared absconders by the court concerned. The federal government had also approached Interpol for the issuance of red warrant for the arrest of the MQM-L leaders living in the United Kingdom.

The then KESC MD Shahid Hamid, his driver and a guard were gunned down in the Defence Housing Authority on July 5, 1997.

Published in Dawn, August 27th, 2017