Stop or not! I’m shooting: Taxi driver slain in front of son
Four Rangers personnel suspended over incident.
“The driver stopped and started reversing towards the Rangers who opened fire at him,” says an eye witness. PHOTO: MOHAMMAD NOMAN/EXPRESS
KARACHI:
A trigger-happy member of the paramilitary Rangers shot dead a taxi driver who was taking his four-year-old child to buy fruit for Iftar in the city’s Gulistan-e-Jauhar neighbourhood on Tuesday.
An eyewitness said he saw Rangers men on motorcycles signalling at the taxi to stop. “The driver stopped and started reversing towards the Rangers who opened fire at him,” he said.
Ghulam Rasul, the Rangers soldier responsible for the incident, said he suspected the driver was a bandit who had kidnapped a child. But police officials ruled out such a possibility.
The driver, identified as Murad, a resident of Chishti Nagar, Block 10 in Gulistan-e-Jauhar, was shot four times in the chest. Murad’s son was unharmed but he was unable to speak after witnessing the whole shocking episode.
His body was taken to Jinnah hospital for an autopsy and was then handed over to the family.
“The victim was dead when he was brought to the hospital,” said the medico-legal officer at Jinnah hospital.
The law enforcers also vouched for Murad as a law- abiding citizen who had no criminal record, as later corroborated by DIG Tahir Naveed, police chief for District East.
The head of the paramilitary unit, Major General Rizwan Akhtar, later suspended four Rangers personnel for their role in the incident.
On June 4, a Rangers solider gunned down a 22-year-old motorist Ghulam Haider in Shah Faisal Colony for allegedly failing to stop his car. The youth was driving his cousin to the hospital for a dialysis.
Published in The Express Tribune, July 17th, 2013.
A trigger-happy member of the paramilitary Rangers shot dead a taxi driver who was taking his four-year-old child to buy fruit for Iftar in the city’s Gulistan-e-Jauhar neighbourhood on Tuesday.
An eyewitness said he saw Rangers men on motorcycles signalling at the taxi to stop. “The driver stopped and started reversing towards the Rangers who opened fire at him,” he said.
Ghulam Rasul, the Rangers soldier responsible for the incident, said he suspected the driver was a bandit who had kidnapped a child. But police officials ruled out such a possibility.
The driver, identified as Murad, a resident of Chishti Nagar, Block 10 in Gulistan-e-Jauhar, was shot four times in the chest. Murad’s son was unharmed but he was unable to speak after witnessing the whole shocking episode.
His body was taken to Jinnah hospital for an autopsy and was then handed over to the family.
“The victim was dead when he was brought to the hospital,” said the medico-legal officer at Jinnah hospital.
The law enforcers also vouched for Murad as a law- abiding citizen who had no criminal record, as later corroborated by DIG Tahir Naveed, police chief for District East.
The head of the paramilitary unit, Major General Rizwan Akhtar, later suspended four Rangers personnel for their role in the incident.
On June 4, a Rangers solider gunned down a 22-year-old motorist Ghulam Haider in Shah Faisal Colony for allegedly failing to stop his car. The youth was driving his cousin to the hospital for a dialysis.
Published in The Express Tribune, July 17th, 2013.