Extortion and arrests: Cook killed, 13 others injured in grenade attack

Rangers claim to have apprehended three suspects in raids in Lines Area.

KARACHI:

A man identified as 52-year-old Saleem was killed, while 13 others were injured in a grenade attack on Yadgar Fish, a restaurant, on Saturday.

The Jamshed Quarters police claimed that the restaurant was targeted because the owner had refused to pay extortionists. The restaurant which is located on Jamshed Road was attacked at 2:35am. Witnesses told the police that two men on a motorcycle were responsible. SHO Khushnood Javed said that the motorcyclists opened fire at the restaurant and then threw a hand grenade at it. The injured were taken to Civil Hospital. Saleem was the restaurant cook and had been working there for a while. The restaurant’s employees and customers were among the injured, they were identified as Khalil, Jalil, Sikandar, Ismail, Shahid, Ashar, Atif, Manzur, Irfan, Aalamuddin, Akbar, Ahmaduddin, Bilal and Arif. The restaurant owner, Younus, and residents of the area said that the restaurant was attacked because the owner had not paid Ahmed Ali Magsi, a Lyari gangster, the extortion money.  They claimed that Magsi had demanded Rs1.5million as protection money and although Younus had paid Rs0.1million, he had refused to pay the rest.

According to the Bomb Disposal Squad, the grenade was Russian made and similar grenades had been used before in Lyari.

The police said they could not comment on the motive behind the attack as the restaurant owner had not registered a complaint with them. An FIR no 251/12 was registered under sections 302, 334 /34 of the Explosives Act and section 7 of the Anti-Terrorism Act against unidentified men.

In an unrelated incident, 26-year-old Mohammad Asif was gunned down in Block 13D-2, said the Gulshan-e-Iqbal police.

Busted 

On Saturday, Rangers claimed to have apprehended three suspects in two different raids in Lines Area and seized three Kalashnikovs, three pistols, a repeater gun and bullets from them. The Rangers had cordoned off the area during the raid. The suspects were not handed over to the police.

The Ferozabad police said that they arrested seven people, including three women, in a raid at a fake newspaper office on Tariq Road. SP Malik Murtaza said that they raided the office on a tip-off and seized fake press cards and three bottles of liquor from them.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 27^th, 2012.