Senior journalist shot dead in Sukkur

Police suspect property dispute as motive for the attack

HYDERABAD:

A senior reporter of a Sindhi news channel, Jan Muhammad Mahar, was shot dead in an armed attack by unidentified assailants in the Sukkur district late on Saturday night.

According to the channel's reporter Anas Ghangro, who shifted him to a private hospital, Mahar was attacked few minutes after he left the channel's office after 9pm to go home.

Ghangro said that Mahar was in his car when he was attacked close to the office. The assailants escaped firing gunshots in the air to scare away the local people. The police could not be contacted for their version. Earlier a reporter of a newspaper was shot dead at his autak in the Pir Jo Goth area of the Khairpur district, on August 7. Ghulam Asghar Khand, 49 years old, had sustained nine gunshots.

Sukkur SSP Singhar Malik informed that dispute over a piece of land in Chak area of Sukkur was apparently the cause of the attack. According to him, Mahar was attacked at around 9.15pm and the police came to know about the attack at 9:30pm.

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Malik told The Express Tribune that he and Sukkur DIG Javed Jiskani reached the hospital where they also brought the city's top surgeons and doctors to operate on the journalist to save his life, however, Mahar could not survive.

He said that three separate teams of police led by the DSPs were trying to hunt the assailants who came on a motorbike. Two of the teams were cordoning off the areas and conducting snap checking while the third team was checking the CCTV footages.

"A personal dispute seems to be the cause of the attack," the SSP said. Malik apprised that Mahar neither told the local police about his on-going dispute in Shikarpur nor sought security for himself.