KARACHI, April 27: A Shia scholar and headmaster of a local school was wounded while his police guard was shot dead in a drive-by shooting when they were returning home from his school near Gujjar Nullah on Saturday, police said.

They added that 54-year-old Syed Baqir Hussain Zaidi came out of a government school in Liaquatabad, in which he was a headmaster, after the day’s work and drove his car out with his driver on the back seat.

He had just gone a few furlongs away when two armed men on a motorcycle intercepted them, fired a few shots at them from a close range and sped away.

The police said driver Qasim Jafri, 35, who was a police guard given to the scholar, received a bullet in his head and died on his way to hospital.

Mr Zaidi sustained a bullet in his left arm and another in his left leg. He was taken to the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital (ASH) from where he was taken to a private hospital.

Doctors at the ASH said that Mr Zaidi’s condition was stable.

The chief of the Jafaria Alliance, a non-political Shia group, Allama Abbas Kumaili, said that Mr Zaidi was a leader of his group and a victim of yet another sectarian attack in the city.

“He is a respected teacher and an eminent Shia scholar. The attack on him is part of a series of sectarian attacks perpetrated against the Shia community,” said Mr Kumaili.

He said that the situation in Karachi clearly showed that all liberal parties and the Shia community were on militant elements’ target.

“Baqar Zaidi has been attacked in the same area where another teacher and intellectual Sibte Jafar Zaidi had been killed a month ago. We smell a plan against Karachi’s literate people,” he added.

‘Sectarian’ killing

A 25-year-old man, Hasan Kashmiri, was gunned down by unidentified armed men in Kashmiri Mohalla of a Golimar neighbourhood on Saturday.

The Rizvia police claimed that the young man was killed due to a personal enmity. However, various Shia groups claimed that it was another sectarian killing in the city.

Activists said that the deceased was a member of the Shia community and gunned down when he was standing near a bus shop near his house.

The body was taken to the ASH for medico-legal formalities.