Targeted killing: MQM candidate gunned down

TTP claims responsibility; police refuse to rule out family or business related dispute.

HYDERABAD:

A National and provincial assembly candidate of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement was gunned down in what appears to be a targeted assassination on Thursday. Fakhrul Islam Khan, whose nomination forms had been accepted for the PS 47 and NA 221 constituencies of Qasimabad and Hyderabad’s rural talukas, was killed in the Hala Naka area while he was returning home from his office.

Eyewitnesses told the police that two unidentified men riding on a motorcycle fired at him from close range. Khan sustained four gunshots, three in the chest and one in the abdomen. The assailants’ motorcycle fell over during the attack and would not start and they snatched another motorcycle from a passerby and fled.

“The attack seems to be an act of targeted killing,” said the Hyderabad SSP Saqib Ismail Memon. He said that the assailants’ motorcycle has been seized and a police team headed by the SP City has been formed to investigate the incident.

A large number of MQM leaders and workers reached the civil hospital and later gathered at Khan’s father’s residence in the Pathan Colony area. The markets in Hala Naka and Pathan Colony were shut down in reaction to the killing.

According to the MQM’s In-charge Hyderabad Zone, Muhammad Sharif, MQM chief Altaf Hussein spoke to the family via telephone and condoled Khan’s death.

“He advised them to bear the loss with patience and that their son will always be remembered as a martyr of the movement.”

Khan’s family and friends say that he had no known enemies even though he was in the transport business. “He was a very humble man who would apologise to people even for the mistakes of others,” said his father Haji Muhammad Imran Khan, adding that he believed the killing was political in nature. Fakhrul Islam Khan is survived by his widow, three sons and two daughters.

According to Agha Arsalan, the SHO of Hatri police station in whose limits the incident happened, the family refused to allow a postmortem. He also said that no FIR has been registered so far.

This is the second fatal attack on MQM workers in Hyderabad in less than a month. Three workers of the party, Azeem Shoro, Murtaza Kunbhar and Sher Muhammad, were shot dead at the MQM’s unit office in SITE area on March 17.

Tehrik-e-Taliban (TTP) spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan claimed responsibility for the murder in a telephone call to The Express Tribune. The TTP has previously threatened to target the MQM for being a ‘secular’ party, along with the PPP and ANP.

However, police sources say a family dispute between Khan and his brothers cannot be ruled out as the reason behind his murder. “It’s known that he was living separately from his father and brothers for many years. A few months ago his two brothers occupied two of the petrol pumps belonging to their father in Hyderabad. There are also reports that [Fakhrul Islam Khan] bought around Rs20 million worth of Iranian diesel a few months back but didn’t pay for it,” a police source told The Express Tribune on condition of anonymity.

MQM sources say that the party will likely award the ticket for either of the two constituencies, NA 221 and PS 47, to Khan’s younger brother Iftikharul Islam Khan. These constituencies have traditionally remained a stronghold of the PPP.

In the 2008 general elections, the MQM’s candidate for NA 221, Dr Mumtaz Ali, bagged only 3,223 votes against 102,737 secured by the PPP’s candidate Syed Ameer Ali Shah Jamote. Similarly, in PS-47, the MQM’s Aziz Ahmed polled 7,774 votes against the PPP’s Zahid Ali Bhurgari who got 64,402 votes.

 

Published in The Express Tribune, April 12^th, 2013.