KARACHI: The wife of a senior professor of NED University of Engineering and Technology was shot dead while driving back home in Gulshan-i-Iqbal on Monday. Police remain unsure about the exact motive behind the killing and are pursuing investigations on both possibilities — resistance against an armed mugging attempt and a possible targeted killing, officials say.

Gulshan SP Shahnawaz Chachar said that Ms Shazia Khan (45), wife of NED professor Dr Raza Ali Khan, was leaving the varsity’s staff colony while driving a car. She procured grocery items from the market in Gulshan-i-Iqbal Block-7 and was returning home when she was attacked by armed men near Maskan Chowrangi.

Another officer of Gulshan police said that they received information from a nearby private hospital that a woman with a bullet wound on her head has been brought for treatment at around noon. She was subsequently taken away by her relatives to another private hospital where she expired.

SP Chachar said that the investigators were probing the murder from two possible aspects, namely targeted killing and resistance over robbery.

The officer said that since the relatives were in trauma, the investigators could not record their statement as to whether the family had received any threat.

Mr Chachar opined that during mugging attempts, robbers usually did not kill women. He pointed out that no valuables were taken away from the victim by the killers.

He believed there were “chances” that the killers were armed pillion riders.

The police have registered an FIR (373/2019) under sections 302 (murder) and 34 (common intention) of the Pakistan Penal Code against unknown suspects.

The victim’s body was later brought to the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre to fulfil legal formalities.

Police surgeon Dr Qarar Ahmed Abbasi said that the woman has sustained a single bullet wound on her face, which travelled through her head.

Published in Dawn, July 16th, 2019