GUJAR KHAN: Two of the three young men killed during the violence in Birmingham, Masawar Ali and Shahzad Ali, were brothers and hailed from Guliana, six kilometres from Gujar Khan town. Haroon Jahan, the third victim, belonged to Gujranwala.

According to eyewitnesses, the three men were members of a group protecting their community from looters and arsonists, Police arrested a 32-year-old man after the killings.

Tariq Jahan, the father of Haroon Jahan, said he was nearby when the accident happened.

“My instinct was to help the three people, I did not know who they were, but they had been injured.

“I was helping the first man and someone from behind told me my son was behind me.”

Mirza Saboor, a first cousin of Shahzad Ali and Masawar Ali, told Dawn from Guliana (the ancestral town of the two brothers) that their parents had to be hospitalised since they were unable to come to terms with the tragedy.

Their elder brother, who too lives in Britain, was unable to speak to media about the incident.

According to family sources, Ghazanfar Ali, the father of Shahzad and Masawar, had migrated to Britain during the early 1970s and all his family was living with him. They ran a business of car washing in Birmingham.

Baroness Saeeda Warsi, chairperson of the Conservative party of UK, and Sir Anwar Pervez, the owner of Best Way Enterprises, also hail from rural areas of Gujar Khan tehsil.