KARACHI: A private security guard shot dead a minor boy selling toys in a Clifton area on Sunday, police said.

The incident prompted Karachi Administrator Murtaza Wahab to get registered a murder case against the guard, who had escaped abandoning the body.

Boat Basin SHO Naseer Tanoli said eight-year-old Muhammad Umer was killed by Jan Mohammed ‘accidentally’ at Bilawal House Chowrangi near a famous eatery.

He said different accounts suggested that the guard was cleaning his gun and it accidentally went off.

He said the guard took the wounded boy on his motorbike to a nearby private hospital, but he died on way due to excessive bleeding. The guard abandoned the body near railway tracks in the same area and rode away.

The police found the body and brought it to the Dr Ruth Pfau Civil Hospital Karachi for medico-legal formalities.

Later, a case was registered against the guard on the complaint of victim’s father Khadim Hussain who stated that he along with his family lived in Shirin Jinnah Colony but originally hailed from Rohri.

He said he drove rickshaw to earn livelihood. He was in Defence when his elder son informed him that the guard of a restaurant had killed his younger son Umer. He rushed to the spot along with his wife and the elder son, but the whereabouts of Umer were not known.

As the mother was crying, two persons sitting at the restaurant took them in their Vigo SUV to the Jackson police station where the body of his son was lying in a Chippa ambulance.

Published in Dawn, November 14th, 2022