HYDERABAD, June 13: The cold-blooded murder of six villagers by dacoits in the Nathu Mallah village on Thursday is said to be a rejoinder to the Hyderabad district police who had gunned down a dacoit, Ghulam Nabi alias Fauji Panwhar, and two of his gang members, Rano Siyal and Sikandar Tangwanio, on June 10 in Thatta district, police sources confirmed on Friday.
Police said that Fauji Panwhar carried a prize of Rs500,000 on his head.
The villagers killed were the family members of Nathu Mallah, who is a peasant of Abdul Ghani Soomro, the nephew of former PPP MPA Haji Abdul Khaliq Soomro.
The Nathu Mallah village is located 2kms away from the Abdul Rehman police post of the Bulri Shah Karim police station, which is situated 35kms away from the village.
A police source said that the dacoits arrived in the village around 8pm, asked the men, a boy and a guest of Nathu Mallah to stand in front of their house, and then shot them dead at point blank range. By 8:30pm, they had fled towards the Moolchand Forest.
Those killed were identified as Mustafa Mallah, 35, Haneef Mallah, 35, Ahmed Mallah, 30, Jumo Mallah, 30, Saddam Mallah, 13, and Ashraf Jalbani, who was a resident of Kotri.
It was learnt that some relatives of those killed had also been injured and were taken to the Rural Health Centre of Bulri Shah Karim.
The dacoits were said to be the gang members of Ghulam Nabi alias Fauji Panwhar and had avenged the killings of both their leader as well as their accomplices as they believed that Nathu Mallah had tipped off the police on June 10 about the hideout of the dacoits in the Ayub Mallah village, near Jhoke Sharif, where the dacoits were holding a trader of Golarchi, Zulfiqar Sheikh, as hostage. So they killed Nathu’s family.
A heavy contingent of the Hyderabad police, led by A. D. Khwaja, is combing the Moolchand Forest.
The regional police officer, Hyderabad, Ghulam Mohammad Malkani, on Thursday night had confirmed that the dacoits had shot dead six villagers and injured two others. He, however, was not sure whether the dacoits had done so to avenge the killing of Fauji Panwhar on June 10.
The Bulri Shah Karim police had not registered any case till the filing of this report at 8:30pm on Friday.
Our Thatta correspondent adds: Police contingents, led by DPO A. D. Khwaja and the DPO, Thatta, Nadir Khoso, had sealed all the entrance and exit points of Veeran, Khadi, Moolchand and Budhka forests and were combing the areas inhabited by Soomro, Khoso, Babbar and Mirbahar tribesmen.
Meanwhile, former PPP MPA Haji Abdul Khaliq Soomro told newsmen that Nathu Mallah’s family had shifted to the village and had become the peasants of his nephew as they could not bear the atrocities of the dacoits in Thatta.
Sources said that the forests remained a safe haven for the dacoits of upper Sindh during summer.