At Numaish, a boy turns saviour for hundreds

A crowd had gathered at the place for a funeral; four Shia men shot dead.

KARACHI:

In this metropolitan city of 20 million, where murders are routine, deaths merely mishaps and road accidents a normality, a silent spectator turned out to be the hero on Tuesday  - saving hundreds of lives as a six-kg bomb was defused at Numaish.

Standing at the gate of the Quaid’s mausoleum, the boy was just watching the people running here and there while protesting at Numaish Chowrangi. The road toward Saddar was blocked for traffic as the Shia community prepared for the funeral of two men, who had been gunned down earlier in the day.

Suddenly a black-coloured Toyota Corolla stopped by, trying to find its way ahead. After failing to cross the roadside barricades, the car turned to the left. Quite normal indeed.

But one of the doors of the car opened and someone pushed out something in the shape of a concrete block on the road. The car then sped off toward the Shahrae Quaideen.

The boy went to the policemen deployed nearby, narrating to them the whole scene. From there, the whole situation changed. The public was warded off, the bomb disposal squad called and a major terror activity foiled.

Police believe the attackers wanted to target the crowd gathered at the main Numaish Chowrangi to participate in the funeral of prominent Shia leader, Allama Aftab Ahmed Jaffery, and his friend, Mirza Shahid Ali. The two men were shot dead in the morning in Lines Area as they were going to their workplace.

Jaffery was the deputy secretary general of Majlis-e-Wahdat-e-Muslimeen (MWM) as well as the chief of the Palestine Foundation of Pakistan.

Two armed men riding a motorcycle fired a volley of bullets at the victims’ car near the Saddar Parking Plaza, ASP Ghulam Murtaza Malik told The Express Tribune.

Jaffery was shot at least 15 times while Ali was shot at least seven times, Brigade police said. The assailants used 9mm pistols.

Their bodies were taken to the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, from where the families of the victims took them to Imambargah-e-Shah-e-Khurasan without medico-legal formalities. People belonging to the Shia community started gathering at the Numaish Chowrangi to participate in their funeral and to condemn the incident.

The protesters pelted the passing vehicles with stones and set tyres ablaze, blocking the flow of traffic on MA Jinnah Road. Extra contingents of law enforcers were called in to avoid any further mishap.

As the funeral prayers were about to begin at around 3:30pm, the minor boy, whose identity was kept secret, informed police about the presence of a suspect concrete block near Gate No. 2 of the Mazar-e-Quaid.

“If the bomb would have gone off, a minimum of 150 people would have died,” said ASP Malik. “Apparently, the same group was behind the targeted killing [of the two Shia men] and planting the bomb.”

The remote-controlled bomb weighed six kilogrammes and also contained ball bearings, according to a bomb disposal expert. The explosives were concealed in a packet designed like a concrete block connected with two batteries. “Over half a dozen bombs have been defused this year and all of them bore resemblance with each other,” he added.

No case about the killings or the bomb has been registered.

The funerals of the victims were later offered at the Numaish Chowrangi after Maghrib prayers and they were laid to rest at the Wadi-e-Hussain graveyard on Karachi-Hyderabad highway.

As the participants of the funeral were going toward the graveyard,  two people were shot dead allegedly by  Rangers.

MWM spokesperson Ali Ahmar told The Express Tribune that the participants were injured by Rangers’ firing in Liaquatabad No. 10.

District West DIG Javed Odho said that unidentified protesters torched at least two trucks and a bus during riots. “It would be premature to say that the participants were killed by Rangers or not.”

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