Out of hand: Teenage girl shot as ‘phadda’ turns ugly

Faizan and Akbar Dhedhi are now on the run from the police.

KARACHI:

Sixteen-year-old Nimra was shot and injured when two men, allegedly the nephews of a prominent businessman, opened fire at her house.

Nimra’s brother, Sheikh Waqas Khursheed, registered an FIR, No. 506/11 with the Boat Basin police, against two boys, Faizan Dehdhi and Akbar Dehdhi, under Section 324 of the Pakistan Penal Code.

Khursheed, who runs a private business, told The Express Tribune that Faizan and Akbar, once friends of his, shot at his apartment on the seventh floor at Boat Basin. A bullet pierced his youngest sister’s hand and she was taken to a private hospital. The girl was later treated at the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre and discharged. The Dhedhi boys and Khursheed had a falling out about three months ago over a personal dispute. “Faizan accused me of turning his girlfriend against him and began threatening me,” Khursheed claimed. “He threatened me both directly and indirectly many times and finally he opened fire at my house from the street bellow.”

Nimra’s brother claims that he has already turned down an offer from the suspects’ family about a possible compromise over the registration of the case. He also went on to accuse the police station where he registered the FIR of supporting the Dhedhi family.

The family claims that no such incident occurred and the whole thing is a misunderstanding. They said that the boys’ guards opened aerial fire as they were passing by the apartments and Khursheed took it to be an attack. District South SSP Naeem Sheikh, however, rubbished his claims and said that they registered a case against the pair by name and are not under pressure from their family. While the suspects are currently in hiding, the police are looking for them and are confident that it is only a matter of time before they are found.

Clifton DSP Zameer Abbasi claims that such cases are a commonplace. Young men of influential families tend to group together and fight each other with the help of their private, armed, security guards. In 2010 there was the case in Clifton where a boy named Ali Murad was shot dead in a similar clash between two groups.

Recently, however, the number of cases has decreased. Police credit this decline to their new strategy in which they take action against the culprits and file cases immediately before their families can get involved.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 6^th, 2011.