Shahid Hamid murder case: Charge sheet submitted against suspected hitman

MQM chief, Nadeem Nusrat, Suhail Zaidi named instigators.

KARACHI: An anti-terrorism court's administrative judge was given on Thursday the charge sheet against suspected hitman Minhaj Qazi alias Asad in the 19-year-old murder case of the then Karachi Electric Supply Corporation (KESC) managing director Shahid Hamid.

Apart from Qazi's role in the assassination, the police charge sheet also points to involvement of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement chief, the current convener of the party, Nadeem Nusrat, and a London-based leader, Suhail Zaidi, as instigators in the case.

Hamid, a senior bureaucrat, along with his driver, Ashraf Brohi, and guard, Khan Akbar, was gunned down near his residence in Defence Housing Authority on July 5, 1997. It was reported that four armed men driving in a white Margalla car ambushed with automatic weapons the vehicle carrying the trio as soon as it emerged out of the bureaucrat's residence.

One of the assailants, Saulat Ali Khan alias Saulat Mirza, has already been executed for the murder, nearly a year ago at Machh Central Jail in Balochistan.

The charge sheet states that Qazi and Mirza fired upon the KESC MD and two others with Kalashnikovs while two other assailants stayed in the white car at the street's end. It also refers to the statements of Hamid's wife, Shahnaz, who is a retired bureaucrat, and his son, Umer, who is a police officer.

According to the investigators, the suspect in custody revealed that he, along with the team involved in the murder, was 'ordered' by the MQM chief indirectly through his party's senior leadership. The bureaucrat's family also suspects the involvement of MQM in the murder, claiming that he was being threatened by party leaders before his murder. The family asserts that the party did not want to see him as the KESC head.

Accepting the charge sheet, the administrative judge referred the case to ATC-V for trial.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 10^th, 2016.