Targeted attack: Former MPA shot at while in aitekaf

After three hours in the OT, Jamali was taken to Karachi for further treatment.

HYDERABAD: A former member of the Sindh Assembly, Raheem Baksh Jamali, was shot and injured while sitting in aitekaf at a mosque on Sunday.

In a statement recorded by the police, Jamali claimed that at 5:30am four men barged into Jamia Masjid of the Cooperative Housing Society in Shaheed Benazirabad and opened fire at him.

Jamali, also a former president of the Shaheed Benazirabad district bar association, was in surgery for three hours at a private hospital before being taken to Karachi for further treatment. The doctors said that his pancreas, stomach and a kidney were damaged.

According to the pesh imam of the mosque, the suspects had entered the building from a door which led into an alley and thus made it difficult to see who they were. The police claim to have arrested two of the five suspects.

While talking to The Express Tribune, a lawyer claimed that in his statement to the police, Jamali had named people close to a top PPP leader, including the five attackers, as suspects.

DSP Aijaz Memon identified them as Ayub Jamali and Lal Khan. The DSP said that except for the names of the five suspects, no other names were mentioned or recorded.

Background check

In 1988, Jamali was elected as an MPA on a Pakistan Peoples Party ticket. Sources claim that Jamali was a close associate of Benazir Bhutto but he left the party when he developed differences with her husband, President Asif Ali Zardari. When Benazir’s brother, Murtaza Bhutto returned to Pakistan in the 1990s, Jamali joined PPP-Shaheed Bhutto but left a few years later.

Death threats

An associate of Jamali, advocate Ghulam Mustafa Korai, told The Express Tribune that while speaking at a press conference a month ago, Jamali had stated that he was being given death threats. “Jamali had said that some influential people were trying to use his peasants to kill him,” said Korai. “The same way they killed Ali Muhammad Dahiri.”

Last year, Advocate Dahiri, a member of the Sindh Bar Council, was murdered in Shaheed Benazirabad. According to Korai, Jamali and his peasants were in dispute over a piece of agricultural land. He believes that the peasants were supported by the PPP. He added that former prime minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali had tried and failed to resolve the issue in his capacity as a community leader.