Accidental or targeted? Lawyer fraternity boycotts courts against colleague’s killing

Police claim the firing at PPP leader’s house was aimed at Brohi clan elder not lawyer.

SUKKUR:

The lawyer fraternity stayed away from the courts and staged demonstrations on Saturday across upper Sindh to protest the murder of a lawyer gunned down by unidentified men in Ratodero district in Larkana on Friday night.

The demonstration was staged outside respective bar associations against Nazir Noonari’s murder, which took place on Friday night. In Sukkur, the lawyers staged protests shouting slogans against the police who had failed to protect his life while they stayed away from the courts.

“Lawyers are being targeted throughout Sindh but the police is not doing anything to arrest the culprits,” said Sukkur Bar Association president Hadi Bux Bhatt. Calling the murder a target killing, he blamed that the police have declared the murder an outcome of an old enmity to simplify the case. He warned the police of wide spread protests if the culprits were not arrested soon.

The killing

A group of men opened indiscriminate firing at the drawing room of a Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leader and landlord Mushtaq Jalbani near the Ratodero bypass. The firing killed lawyer Nazir Noonari’s and an elder of the Brohi clan, Ali Gul Brohi. The firing also injured Mushtaq Jalbani, Syed Imdad Shah and Naseer Mohammad Khokhar, while the assailants managed to escape.

The bodies and injured were shifted to a taluka hospital in Ratodero but, due to a lack of facilities, the injured were referred to the  Larkana hospital.

When The Express Tribune contacted the Ratodero police station, the head constable Sanwal Mirali said the attack was the result of a Veesar-Brohi dispute as the elder of Veesar clan was present at the gathering, which was routinely held at the PPP leader’s house.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 6^th, 2013.