Targeted attack: Sikh hakim, employee gunned down

Families claim both men did not have any enemies.

SHABQADAR: A Sikh hakim and his employee were shot dead by unidentified men in the main Shabqadar bazaar on Thursday afternoon.

Haider Khan, a police official from Shabqadar police station, said 34-year-old Dr Pram Jeet Singh, a resident of Peshawar, was working in his herbal medicine shop with Zahid, 36, when two men walked in, shot them and escaped in a car.

The police have registered an FIR on a request from Zahid’s father, Sayed Asghar. The father clarified he and his son did not have any enmity with anyone.

Sardar Surjeet Singh, Dr Pram Jeet Singh's brother, told The Express Tribune that they also have no rivalry with anyone and had not received any threats either. He said this was the second attack on a member of the Sikh community in Charsadda. He added that after a Sikh doctor was abducted, they had been thinking about leaving the province.

According to Sardar Soran Singh, the adviser to Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister on minorities, he had ordered the local SHO to start an investigation and arrest the suspects. He said that those individuals who did not want peace in the region and wanted to sabotage the peace talks were behind such acts.

Asghar Khan, who also works in the same bazaar, told The Express Tribune that he heard his son had been sitting in the hakim’s shop when the incident took place. They told him that Zahid tried to stop the men and was shot once in the head.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 14^th, 2014.

Correction: In an earlier version of this article the hakim's name was incorrectly stated as Faramjeet. The error is regretted.