Swift action: Four men arrested in Shikarpur killings

Seven family members were killed over an old enmity on Saturday night.

SUKKUR:

The Shikarpur police managed to arrest, on Sunday evening, four of the 24 men nominated in the FIR of the killings of seven family members in Kalar Karo.

Following the incident on Saturday, a police team led by Shikarpur SSP Altaf Hussain Leghari, following the tracks left by the attackers, raided and cordoned off Garhi Tegho - Sardar Tegho Khan Teghani’s native village.

Later, the police arrested four of the accused from the Teghani tribe - Qadir Bux, Mehrab, Muhammad Afzal and Abdul Razzaq - and also seized two TT pistols, two rifles and a couple of motorcycles from their possession that are believed to have been used in the attack.



According to the Rustam police station head constable, Irshad Ali, the relatives of the family claimed that the kidnappings of Sardar Teghani’s brother, Gul Hassan, and nephew, Asghar, was the motive behind the killings.

The two men were kidnapped under mysterious circumstances in the first week of March, for which Sardar blamed the Sukkur and Khairpur police. Later, both were recovered from near Jagan, the katcha area of Shikarpur, and Sardar then blamed the Marfani tribe for the kidnapping. The Shikarpur police denied any knowledge of the kidnapping and even of the recovery, which further shrouds the events in mystery.

Meanwhile, the bodies of the deceased were laid to rest in their native graveyard near Jagan. After the last rites, Hussain Bux Marfani - whose wife and six children were killed - blamed Teghani tribesmen for killing his family members. “I am a poor man and I earn my livelihood by working as a labourer in Ghotki,” he said. “I left my native village due to a dispute with my own tribesmen two years ago and had nothing to do with the kidnappings of Sardar’s brother and nephew.”

Leghari, talking to The Express Tribune, confirmed the arrests and said that the arrested men were nominated along with 20 others. “We raided Garhi Tegho after tracking the footprints of the accused and arrested four of them and also seized weapons and motorcycles from their possession,” he said. Leghari added that the police are conducting further raids for the remaining accused who have been nominated in the case.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 1^st, 2014.