GUJRAT, Oct 14: Four members of a family, who were going to attend court proceedings in an attempted murder case, were shot dead by a proclaimed offender and his accomplices in an ambush near Bhulasar Morr, Jalalpur Jattan, about 40 kilometres from here, on Tuesday morning.
Reports reaching here revealed that three brothers, Mazhar Iqbal, Azhar Iqbal and Shafqat Pervez, along with their cousin Zahid Mubarak, were on their way to the Gujrat sessions court from their Kotla Dheenda village by their jeep (IDE-575) when PO Safdar and other assailants shot at them near Bhulasar Morr.
The jeep overturned because of intense firing, police said, and added that the assailants stepped down and sprayed more bullets on the injured occupants till they were sure of their death. They fled the scene.
The incident took place about 8:45 in the morning after which the bodies were sent to the mortuary for autopsy by the Jalalpur Jattan Saddar police. However, no case was registered till filing of this report in the evening.
A Jalalpur Saddar police spokesman told this correspondent on telephone that the incident might be the result of enmity between the two groups. Cases against the two parties had been lodged with the Karrianwala police station, he added.
The Karrianwala police claimed that one of the slain, Shafqat Pervez, and PO Safdar had shot at and injured Arshad at Kotla Dheenda village in 1998, and a case was registered against them on the complaint of Sabir Husain.
Later in 2002, the police registered a case against Safdar and his accomplices for killing homoeopath Dr Asghar, and the former was declared a PO in the case. Later, a milkman Bashir, of the Safdar group, was murdered and a case was registered against men of Dr Asghar Group, the Karrianwala police officials said.
They claimed that PO Safdar and the four slain had close terms, but they parted ways when the slain reconciled with Safdar’s opponent Sabir Husain, who is a complainant of FIR No 184.
The four men were going to the sessions court for a formal patch up with Sabir Husain, they added.
A police spokesman said special raiding teams under the supervision of the Saddar DSP Alhaj Riaz Cheema had been constituted for the arrest of the killers.
DEATH SENTENCE: Additional District and Sessions judge Mian Mureed Husain on Tuesday handed down death sentence to a man and nine-year rigorous imprisonment to his two accomplices for killing a man of different sect.
The court awarded death sentence to Shamshad and hard jail to Zulqernain and Nisar Ahmad. The convicts will have to pay Rs100,000 fine each for the crime. Nisar, Master Afzal and Akram Sarfraz were acquitted for lack of evidence against them.
According to the prosecution, the three men murdered Khalid over possession of a mosque at Goleki village in 1999.
ROBBERIES: Robbers during the last 24 hours plundered cash and valuables from a coaster passengers, a petrol pump and a house in three strikes in the district.
Three robbers boarded a Lahore-bound coaster in the guise of passengers and whipped out their weapons and asked the driver to stop near Kariala, in Sarai Alamgir police station precinct. They bagged cash and valuables, and escaped.
Seven robbers came to a petrol pump situated near Mehsam in the area of Daulat Nagar police, tied up the four employees at gunpoint and collected Rs35,700 in cash from the coffer and snatched Rs1,300 from Ataullah, owner of a car (LHF-8221), being fuelled.
Five armed men stormed into Shabbir’s house at Awan Colony and took away hundreds of thousands of rupees in cash.