LAHORE, July 15: Two more footpath sleepers were killed by a serial killer(s) in Gulberg on Friday, raising toll to 11. A shift in the locality and rapid increase in strikes by the killer(s) have bewildered police who are still groping in the dark. A source says the police have not any concrete evidence to help them follow a solid line of investigation.

One of the two killed men was identified as Riaz, 38. A tailor by profession he after his return from his native town in Sargodha was asleep in Liberty Market. He had been hit in the head with a stone found lying close to the body. His colleagues told the police that he used to sleep inside a shop. The shop was closed late on Thursday night and he had to sleep in the open.

The other man, Tahir, 45, a beggar, used to sleep outside the UCH on the Gulberg’s Main Boulevard. His had also been hit in the head with a stone which was lying close to the body. Both the stones weighed over 20kg.

“Yes increasing strikes and killings are a matter of concern,” Lahore Operations police chief SSP Amir Zulfikar told Dawn by phone.

He, however, believed that all the murders should not be taken as serial killings. He said there were chances that certain people in the garb of brick strikes were settling old scores. He said that autopsy of all victims had revealed that they had not been killed with stones, adding the killer(s) might have used some other blunt weapon.