Cheers to tears: Groom shot dead by ‘friends’ during mehndi celebration

‘They lost control of weapons while firing shots in the air’.

FAISALABAD:

Wedding celebrations turned to mourning after the groom was apparently shot dead accidently by his friends who took to celebrating by firing shots in the air at the rasm-i-hina on Friday night.

Sahianwala police said Muhammad Idrees, a resident of Chak 18-JB, was celebrating his rasm-i-hina with his friends when some of them started firing shots in the air. Some bullets hit Idrees who died on the spot, police said.

Abdul Qayyum, one of the guests at the celebration, told media people on Saturday that Idrees had invited some of his friends to his rasm-i-hina a day before the wedding. Some of his friends brought weapons to the ceremony and started firing shots in the air. He said the groom’s family tried to stop them but they paid them no heed.

“Actually many of them were drunk. They did not listen to any of the elders and soon lost control of their weapons. Instead of firing shots in the air, they shot blindly. Some stray bullets hit Idrees and he died on the spot. His ‘friends’ fled the scene.”

Akram Lateef, another guest, said, “Idrees had rivals in the area. He had told his friends to fire shots in the air as a show of strength.” Some of Idrees’s friends had hatched a plot with his rivals to kill him, he said. They used celebratory firing in the air as a cover to take him down, said Lateef.

Sahianwala Station House Officer Inspector Mushtaq Ahmad told The Express Tribune that they had arrested Muhammad Iqbal and Shahid Ali, residents of Chak 218-JB, who were among those who had fired shots at the celebration.

He said they had registered a case under Sections 302, 148 and 149 (murder, rioting, unlawful assembly) of the Pakistan Penal Code. “We are looking for the rest of the men but they are still on the run,” he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 18^th, 2014.