‘Father killed over monthly allowance’

Accused said he was victim of home invasion where his father was killed.

LAHORE:

An unemployed software engineer has confessed to arranging his father’s murder after he stopped his Rs35,000 per month pocket money, police said.

Shahid Munir was strangled to death on February 25, according to a case registered at Ghaziabad police station on his son Bilal Munir’s complaint. Bilal had told the police that he was at home with his wife and father in Madina Town when some robbers broke into the house and rendered him and his wife unconscious using a handkerchief dipped in chloroform. He said when he woke up, he found his father dead in another room.

The police registered a robbery and murder case on the same day.

Malik Nazir, who is in charge of investigations at Ghaziabad police station, said that they had started suspecting that Bilal was involved in the killing because he kept revising his story. He said that Bilal, who graduated from the University of Engineering and Technology five years ago, eventually confessed to killing his father for financial reasons.

SP (Investigation) Amin Bukhari told The Express Tribune that Shahid Munir had worked for an electricity company in Saudi Arabia and had returned to Lahore two months ago.

Upon returning, he found that his son had sold two plots worth Rs8 million without his consent, at which point he stopped his monthly allowance of Rs35,000 per month.

He said that Bilal told the police that he had enlisted a friend named Hafeez, a van driver, to help in the killing in exchange for the promise of a brand new van.

On the night of February 25, while the power was out, Hafeez came to the house and attacked Shahid.

In his confession, Bilal had said that he held his father’s legs down while Hafeez sat on his chest and strangled him, said the SP. He said that Hafeez, a resident of Bagrian, had been arrested.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 7^th, 2012.