MITHI: Sindh Minister for Home Sohail Anwar Siyal and IGP A.D. Khowaja announced at a joint press conference here on Thursday that all the suspects and their facilitators in the murder case of two trader brothers had been put behind bars.

Dileep Kumar Maheshwari and his younger brother Chandar Kumar were gunned down by two motorcyclists during a violent robbery attempt in the town’s Shahi Bazaar on Jan 5 this year.

Mr Siyal and Mr Khowaja praised efforts of Mirpurkhas and Thar police for tracking down the suspected killers and their facilitators.

DIG Mazhar Nawaz Shaikh informed them that the two suspected killers identified as Bah­ram Lashari and Nazar Mohammad Makrani were arrested in a village in Mirpurkhas district after one of their facilitators Allah Warayo Umrani, who was picked up in Nanisar village near Mithi a few days back, provided a lead during interrogation. He said the police team also recovered a pistol, motorcycle and other vital pieces of evidence, including a wallet stuffed with cash snatched from the victims, which was found buried in a sand dune in the village.

Mr Shaikh said the credit for the suspects’ arrest went to DSP Anwer Ali Lakho and his team, who had worked tirelessly for the past two months to trace the criminals.

The investigation teams received help from various sources and made use of technology to get to the killers, he said.

Mr Siyal said that nobody would be allowed to disrupt peace in Thar and expressed the hope that the courts would award exemplary punishment to the culprits.

The Sindh government would announce proper compensation soon for the aggrieved families of the victims, he said.

Mr Khowaja said that police department had given a cheque for Rs1 million as reward to the DIG and his team and hoped Sindh government, too, would announce rewards for the police officials.

SSP Ameer Saud Magsi said that the suspects had confessed to their crime during preliminary interrogation. They would be produced in court and their remand would be sought, he said.

Earlier, the minister and the IGP went to the house of murder victims and informed their father, Petambar Maheshwari, of the arrest of the killers. The minister on the occasion offered some compensation but the father turned down the offer saying the amount was too little to feed family members of his sons.

He, however, thanked police and Mr Siyal for making sincere efforts to arrest the killers.

The double murder of the brothers had created uproar in Thar, prompting Chief Justice of Sindh High Court to take its notice and order police to arrest the killers.

In a related development, the alleged suicide by the only eyewitness to the double murder incident, Nagji Meghwar, has raised questions. Meghwar was a labourer whose body was found floating over a water tank in his house in Meghwar Colony on Tuesday, according to family sources.

Published in Dawn, March 2nd, 2018