KARACHI: A sessions court has indicted a man and a woman for abetment and murder of their four TikToker friends allegedly over a personal dispute in Karachi.
The four victims — Muskan Sheikh, Amir Khan, Rehan Shah and Saddam Hussain — were killed when an unknown assailant attacked the car they were travelling in near Anklesaria Hospital in the early hours of February 1.
The matter recently came up before the Additional District and Sessions Judge (South) Faraz Ahmed Chandio for indictment of the accused, Abdul Rehman Khan alias Shooter, and Sawera.
Sawera, who is on bail, appeared in the court and Rehman was brought from prison.
Two suspects in four TikTokers’ murder case indicted
The judge read out the charges against them.
They, however, pleaded not guilty and opted to contest the case.
The judge directed the investigating officer to produce prosecution witnesses before the court on Oct 30 for recording their testimonies.
In June, the police had chargesheeted Rehman and Sawera for committing offences punishable under Sections 302 (premeditated murder), 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of offence, or giving false information to screen offender), 202 (intentional omission to give information of offence by person bound to inform), 112 (abettor when liable to cumulative punishment for act abetted and for act done) and 34 (common intention) of the Pakistan Penal Code.
The investigating officer had listed 28 witnesses in his report. He mentioned that Muskan Sheikh had been in contact with Rehman with whom she used to make her TikTok videos. The report said Rehman was a habitual criminal and maintained contacts with drug peddlers. Later, Muskan also developed contacts with Amir Khan due to which she often used to have quarrels with Rehman, but the matter was finally settled through a ‘jirga’, the report added.
It mentioned that on the night of the incident, Rehman took Sawera to a restaurant located at Seaview in DHA for making TikTok videos which they uploaded. Later, Sawera and Amir made more videos at the residence of Saddam Hussain and uploaded them on the social media, it added.
Muskan, along with Amir, Saddam and Rehan Shah went to the residence of Sawera where a quarrel reportedly took place and Sawera made a phone call to Rehman, who then contacted Muskan by phone and abused her for visiting Sawera.
The report said that a CCTV footage was recovered which showed a man sitting on a motorcycle was waiting at the crime scene at around 5am where the victims arrived in a car, got off and talked to the bike rider, allegedly Rehman.
The footage also showed the car-riders indulging in a fist-fighting with Abdul Rehman, who suddenly pulled out a pistol and opened fire on them causing them to fall on the ground The attacker was seen fleeing by his motorcycle towards Garden Road, the report said.
The report concluded that in view of the location of Rehman’s mobile phone and other circumstantial evidence, he was found involved in the murder of the four people.
The police record also showed that Rehman was involved in other cases pertaining to attempted murder, encounter, house trespass, terrorism and possessing illicit arms registered at the Steel Town and Quaidabad police stations.
The IO had chargesheeted Sawera for instigating Rehman to kill the four persons. In order to conceal her offence, Sawera had deleted her mobile phone data and switched off the set later, the report added.
A case was registered at the Nabi Bux police station.
Published in Dawn, October 15th, 2021
