Hunting the hunter: Police give target killers a taste of their own medicine

Two suspected target killers were gunned down as they tried to flee after killing a shopkeeper.

KARACHI: In an unusual turn of events, two alleged target killers were killed by the police - minutes after the suspects had killed a shopkeeper in Nazimabad on Monday.

The deceased target killers, who have yet to be identified, killed 35-year-old Abid Farooq at his photocopying shop in Nazimabad’s Urdu Bazaar within the limits of the Rizvia police station. The deceased had been working at the shop for the last eight years.

“We do not have a record of his affiliation with a political or religious party but he was reputed to be a religious man,” said Rizvia SHO Hassan Haider while talking to The Express Tribune. “The target killers shot him multiple times. They entered his shop soon after he had returned from Zuhr prayers at a nearby mosque.”

After killing Farooq, the suspects fled towards Nazimabad, where they opened fire at Maulana Zafar Aslam. Aslam was, however, luckier than their previous target and was only wounded in the attack.

The SHOs of the Rizvia and Nazimabad police stations and their police teams, who were performing snap-checks in the area, were unable to chase down the target killers. However, a third SHO and his team managed to trace and kill both the alleged target killers. As soon as the culprits tried to escape after shooting at Aslam, an encounter took place with the police team passing the area.

“I, along with my team, was returning to the police station from court when I saw them [suspects] as they attempted to flee,” said New Karachi SHO Chaudhry Afzal. “They would most likely have escaped if we had not been present there.”

Witnesses said that the encounter between the police and the criminals continued for over 10 minutes. “There was intense firing,” recalled a witness, Safdar Abbas. “After at least 10 minutes of almost nonstop firing, we saw that both the suspects were killed.”

Though the SHOs of the Rizvia and Nazimabad police stations failed to follow the culprits, they both seemed happy over the killings of the alleged target killers. “It does not matter who killed them, what matters is that they both have been killed,” said Nazimabad SHO Ejaz Lodhi. “Criminals who kill innocent people on a daily basis should be killed.”

Lodhi said that a police constable, Shahzad was also wounded in the exchange of fire, along with a woman, Zahida, and her son, Wajahat. The injured were shifted to the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital to receive medical treatment.

Though the deceased target killers have yet to be identified, senior police officials suspect that the culprits killed in the encounter were also involved in other cases of target killings, particularly in Nazimabad and its surrounding areas.

“There have been several cases of targeted killings in the area in the last few days,” district West and Central police chief DIG Javed Odho told The Express Tribune. “No doubt that they were involved in various other crimes, especially in the recent cases of targeted killings.” Odho added that weapons have also been recovered from the possession of the deceased suspects and that more will be revealed after ballistic cross matching.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 4^th, 2014.