Wife, accomplices turn out to be lawyer’s killers

Victim was shot seven times during robbery allegedly staged by the suspects

THEKRI WALA:

The murderers of a lawyer killed in the Sandal Bar area three days ago turned out on Wednesday to be his wife and an accomplice, according to the police.

Reportedly, the victim’s wife Asma Bibi along with a cousin and another accomplice killed him during a staged robbery.

Police arrested Asma and her cousin within 48 hours and recovered the stolen jewellery and murder weapon. Relatives of the third suspect were also taken into custody and police carried out raids to arrest him.

According to the police report, 26-year-old member of Faisalabad District Bar Association Advocate Suleman Khaliq, a resident of village 30JB, along with his brother Rehman Khaliq, wife Asma and uncle Zahid Ali, was returning home in his car after attending a dinner arranged by his relatives to celebrate his wedding when the attack took place.

On their way home, two masked robbers on a motorcycle stopped the car near Chak 34JB, Balochan, and took the advocate out of the car. They took him aside while their accomplice who was standing near his car snatched jewellery from the woman. According to initial reports, the assailants shot the lawyer seven times on resisting the robbery.

After the murder and robbery incident, police registered a case against the unidentified killers on the statement of Zahid under the provisions of section 302 PPC and started searching for them.

Faisalabad RPO Rifat Mukhtar Raja sought an immediate report of the incident from CPO Sohail Chaudhry and assigned him the task of arresting the killers.

The CPO formed a team consisting of SP Iqbal Town Hafiz Kamran Asghar, Saddar DSP Jamshed Iqbal Nasir Chishti, CDU incharge Branch ASI Javed Ahmed and Gulfishan Colony police post in-charge Malik Imran along with Sandal Bar SHO Taimur Shehzad. The team used technical resources and seized the mobile phone used by the wife of the victim during the investigation into the case.

After checking the mobile phone of the suspect, they came to know that some messages had been deleted after being sent on WhatsApp. When the technical team recovered the data and sought the call record of the phone, the last call was made to Abbas Ali Dogar, son of Mushtaq Ahmed, a resident of 73GB, Jhapal.

He had obtained the phone SIM in someone else's name but was using it himself.

The suspect confessed during police interrogation, that he, along with his friend Usman, had killed Advocate Sulaiman Khaliq Dogar because he had been in love with the victim's wife for four years.

A year and a half ago, the woman's family arranged her engagement with Suleiman and they got married on January 24. "From then on, I planned with Asma that after killing Suleiman, we will both get married," he reportedly told the investigators.

Police have arrested the widow in view of the statement of the arrested suspect. They also recovered the snatched jewellery and seized the murder weapon.

Police have reportedly arrested the relatives of the third suspect, Usman, after failing to trace him.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 11^th, 2021.