KARACHI: Assailants shot dead a 46-year-old man and wounded his friend in Quaidabad on Friday, police said.
The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf claimed that the victim was a party worker and he was getting death threats for putting up resistance to ‘land mafia’ over its plans to occupy a graveyard land in Landhi to build a commercial project.
The police believed that the killing of Haider Swati was a result of some ‘property dispute’. But, they didn’t clarify the dispute between the victim and the land-grabbers continuing for the past few months.
“Two men on a motorbike intercepted a car carrying two people near Murghi Khana bus stop in the second half of the day,” said an official at the Shah Latif Town police station.
“They fired multiple shots and sped away. The driver of the car died on the spot while his aide 52-year-old Umar Zada, who was sitting beside him, suffered serious bullet wounds. Both were taken to the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC) where the wounded was said to be out of danger,” the official said.
He said the victim was a resident of Landhi and going to meet a common friend with the wounded man when they came under the attack.
The police had registered a case against unidentified suspects and started gathering evidence to find out the exact motive and people behind the deadly attack.
Minutes after the incident, PTI leaders and workers reached the JPMC and home of the victim where they condemned the incident and criticised the police for their failure in providing security to a man, who was “already under a threat”.
“There’s a graveyard in a residential area of Landhi,” PTI MPA Saeed Afridi told the media. “For the past few months, there was a move from land and builder mafia to encroach upon the land of the graveyard. The area people have serious reservations and Haider had led the community against the move. He had been getting threats and the area police knew this. We want a thorough investigation and arrest of the killers at the earliest.”
Published in Dawn, December 25th, 2021
