Markets shut down as religious leader shot dead in Tando Adam

Qaiser Hussain Chughtai was shot as he was returning from a vegetable market.

HYDERABAD: Tension gripped Tando Adam town in Sanghar district on Thursday, after a leader of a religious organisation, Qaiser Hussain Chughtai, was shot dead in an apparently targeted attack. A passerby, Tharu Kohli, was also injured.

Chughtai, 55, who was affiliated with the Shia Ulema Council, was reportedly shot by two masked men on a motorcycle at the Peerani Pathak railway crossing. A vegetable merchant by profession, the victim was returning from a nearby vegetable market in his car when he was shot. Another Shia community leader, Manzoor Shah, reportedly died of a heart attack after he went to see Chughtai’s body in the hospital.

Quoting witnesses, DSP Muhammad Ayub Brohi said that the assailants had sprayed Chughtai’s car with bullets. “The attackers were waiting at the crossing. They sped away after shooting Chughtai.” The passerby, Kolhi, was hit by two bullets but managed survived, added Brohi.

Kolhi later told the police that he could not identify the culprits. However, he claimed that the face of the assailant who rode the motorcycle was not covered.

The attack drew widespread condemnation from a host of political and religious parties, including the Pakistan Peoples Party, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, Pakistan Muslim League-Functional and Jamaat-e-Islami. On the very same day the chief of police had given an in-camera briefing on the law and order situation in Sindh to the assembly.

Reports of aerial firing were received from several parts of the district, and markets were forced shut. “The incident seems to be an attempt to trigger sectarian violence in peaceful Sanghar,” alleged PPP MPA Shahid Thaheem.

Shia Ulema Council Sindh vice-president, Allama Asad Raza Naeemi, appealed to the protesters to stay calm. He announced that the community would observe a three-day mourning period. “It is the failure of the sitting government that there is no end to attacks on the Shia community,” he told media personnel outside Chughtai’s residence.

DSP Brohi, however, did not immediately term the incident a sectarian killing.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 15^th, 2013.