Man killed in cable TV turf war

Five others shot and injured as men from rival company open fire.

LAHORE: A cable company employee was shot and killed, allegedly by members of a rival cable company, and eight people were injured in Green Town police jurisdiction on Tuesday.

Faryad Qaiser, 20, a resident of Sattukatla, ran Saher Cable operations in the Pakistan Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (Staffers Phase) housing colony near Ameer Chowk on College Road in Township.

Police sources said Qaiser was laying cable along with other employees when a group of men from Max Cable approached and demanded they stop the work, on Tuesday.

The two cable television companies had confronted each other before. Max Cable, owned by Akram Bola, was operating illegally in the area but was the first to provide cable services, the police sources said. Saher Cable had the colony administration’s permission to operate and Qaiser had previously asked Max employees to remove their cable wire from the area, but they had refused.

On Tuesday, a group of about a dozen men armed with sticks led by Bola approached the Saher men and told them to stop laying cable. The two groups got into a brawl, which ended when the men with Bola opened fire on the Saher men. Sub Inspector Asif Idrees of Green Town police station said none of the Saher men were carrying guns and five of them, apart from Qaiser, received bullet injuries.

Qaiser was rushed to Jinnah Hospital where he died of his wounds. One other man, Muhammad Hussain, was said to be in critical condition. Three men loyal to Bola were also injured in the fight.

Malik Yameen, the owner of Saher Cable, alleged that the police had earlier ignored complaints about Bola’s illegal cable operation. “If the police had played their role in helping to resolve the matter earlier, this would never have happened,” he said.

SI Idrees said that no one had sought to file a first information report yet. The other injured men were identified as Khalid Hussain, Mazhar Hussain, Akram, Yousaf, Ghulam Murtaza, Faryad and Aslam.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 2^nd, 2011.