Drive-by shooting: BB’s old security guard, PPP union president killed

Investigations stalled due to a jurisdiction dispute between two police stations.

KARACHI:

The president of Pakistan Peoples Party’s (PPP) PIA employee union and his friend were killed in Gulistan-e-Jauhar on Saturday evening.

Initial reports say that the president, 42-year-old Syed Ahmer Ali Shah aka Amir Shah, and his friend, Mairaj Khalid Jagirani, was killed when attackers on motorcycles opened fire at his white Toyota Corolla (ATB-661) near Kamran Chowrangi in Gulistan-e-Jauhar.

Witnesses said that the men intercepted the car before shooting the Shah and Jagirani. The victims were taken to the nearest private hospital where they succumbed to their injuries. The police said Amir Shah had been shot eight times with a small pistol.

Karachi chief of police Saud Mirza explained that the assailants probably targeted the men shortly after they finished filling up on fuel near Kamran Chowrangi.

He said that it was too early to say anything about the motive behind the attack as the investigation was under way and details are being gathered. The case has yet to be registered as there appears to be a certain amount of confusion as to which police station’s jurisdiction the incident falls under. The dispute is between the Gulistan-e-Jauhar and Sharae Faisal police.

As the news of the incident spread, PPP leaders and workers reached the hospital yelling for the arrest of the people responsible. The killing triggered violence and angry people gathered at Gulistan-e-Jauhar in protest. They blocked the flow of traffic and pelted passing cars with stones. A passenger bus was also set on fire in Metrovile III, Gulshan-e-Iqbal. Parts of Gulistan-e-Jauhar and Gulshan-e-Iqbal echoed with gunshots and commercial activities were suspended.

Amir Shah’s name was among the party’s senior activists and he had served at many different posts in his 18 years with the party. He began his political career at the Peoples Youth Wing and had been named its president in Karachi. He also worked as Benazir Bhutto’s security guard when she arrived in Pakistan on October 18, 2007.

At the time of his death, he was the Unity CBA-PIA’s president and lived in the Sindh Baloch Muslim Cooperative Housing Society near Pehlwan Goth in Gulistan-e-Jauhar and. Amir Shah had four children.

PPP Karachi deputy information secretary Sohail Abidi strongly condemned the incident. He told The Express Tribune of how the victim was a close friend of Senator Faisal Raza Abidi and was a member of the Jan Nisaran-e-Benazir squad formed to protect Benazir Bhutto on her arrival to the country. Amir Shah’s brother, Syed Khawer Shah, is the PPP president for PS-119.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 17^th, 2011.