KARACHI, Dec 16: Police on Tuesday claimed to have solved the family slaughter mystery as they arrested two young suspects, one of them a class-X student, for killing a 38-year-old woman and her three children in North Karachi.
They said the prime suspect, Zubair Ahmed, 20, son of Naseer Ahmed, had masterminded the multiple murders, for he had suspected an illicit relationship between his mother and the victim woman’s husband.
Seeman, wife of Jameel, and her children – Ramsha, 5, Osama, 6, and Saima, 8 – were found slaughtered in their Sector 5 A-4 house on Dec 13.
The SP of New Karachi, Dr Mohammed Farooq, told Dawn that a special investigation team, comprising the area DSP and SIO, was assigned to investigate the case.
He said the victim woman’s husband had a relationship with the suspect’s family, who lived in the same locality, and he had rented out the upper portion of his house to the suspect’s sister.
The SP quoted the suspect as telling the investigators that Jameel had had illicit relations with his mother for the past several years. “Jameel has been supporting the woman’s family for many years and he had also arranged the marriage of the suspect’s sister,” he added.
The police had initially picked up Shahzad, the husband of the suspect’s sister, for interrogation.
Shahzad and his wife had not been living in their rented portion for the past two months after an estrangement between them. The keys to the portion were with the victim woman.
The station investigation officer of New Karachi, Inspector Mohammed Ashraf, said Zubair and his mother were picked up and questioned after the police learnt from the neighbours that Jameel had a relationship with the suspect’s mother for the past 12 to 13 years.
The SIO said that Zubair and his friend, Nabeel, 18, son of Zaheer Mirza, had originally planned to kill Jameel.
“Zubair reached the victims’ house at around 4pm on Dec 13 and asked the victim woman for the keys to his sister’s rented house portion on the pretext that he wanted to collect some clothes from there,” he said.
The investigator said the suspect opened the upper portion and called his friend through his cellphone asking him to reach the spot.
In the meantime, he said, Osama came upstairs and the suspect trussed him up. “The suspect stabbed the boy in the abdomen and then slit his throat,” he said.
The IO said the victim woman sent her daughter, Saima, upstairs when her son did not return. “The suspects also caught hold of her and slit her throat. They came downstairs after locking the portion,” he added.
Inspector Ashraf said that then the two friends slaughtered the four-year-old daughter of the woman in a room while the victim woman was sitting in the lounge and applying henna to her hair.
Then, he said, the two suspects trussed up the woman and slit her throat.
The investigation officer said the suspects also took away Rs10,000, a gold chain, a DVD player and a power generator before they left the house.
He said the gold chain and a mobile phone were seized from the house of Nabeel on a lead given by Zubair. “The DVD player and the generator were seized from a shop in the locality.”
He said Zubair, a video film-maker and the second eldest among six siblings, had bought two knives from a shop at Rahmania Mor.
He said the suspect used to quarrel with his mother over her alleged relationship with Jameel and he had asked his mother to stop the man from visiting their house. “He had actually gone to kill Jameel, but killed his family when Jameel was not found there,” he added.
The inspector said that Zubair’s father was an elderly and sick man and he did nothing for a living.
He said the police would produce the two suspects before a judicial magistrate on Wednesday to seek their physical custody for investigation and interrogation.
