Lawyer among four shot dead in the city

KARACHI: Around four people, including a lawyer, were shot dead in the city on Wednesday.

Mubarak Ali Kazmi, a lawyer, was gunned down in Block 13-D, Gulshan-e-Iqbal within the limits of the Aziz Bhatti police station. The deceased was on his way home from work when four men on two motorcycles shot him.

"He was on his way home and had stopped to buy some mangoes," said the DSP of the Aziz Bhatti police station, Nasir Lodhi. "The incident took place moments after he bought the fruit and had just restarted his car when the assailants killed him." He added that the men had been following the lawyer for a while.

According to the DSP, the deceased was the son-in-law of renowned scholar Allama Talib Jauhri. The DSP said he was shot at least four times and died on the spot. The body was taken to Jinnah hospital for the autopsy.

The police believe the he was killed in a sectarian attack and added that further investigation was being carried out. DSP Nasir Lodhi said that there was an encounter with the lawyer's murderers in which one of the assailants was injured but they managed to escape.

In an unrelated incident, 45-year-old Huma was shot dead while her husband Bilal,55, and 24-year-old son Hussain, were injured when motorcyclists opened fire at their Toyota Corolla in Kareemabad within the jurisdiction of the Azizabad police station. Huma died on the spot while her husband and son have been admitted to the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital. Doctors claim that they are out of danger.

DSP Saleem Akhtar Siddiqui said that the family was targeted in a sectarian attack. They were on their way home to Nazimabad from Gulshan-e-Maymar when the gunmen shot at them.

Majlis-e-Wahdatul Muslimeen (MWM) leader Allama Nasir Abbas Jafri condemned the killings. He demanded that the government and law enforcement agencies should crackdown on militants and religious seminaries to avoid sectarian killings in the city.

On Tuesday night, two men identified as Yaqoob Javed, 25, and Moin, 24, were killed in a firing incident by unidentified motorcyclists near Liaquat Chowk within the limits of the Rizvia police station. The police said that they were not certain about the motives behind the incident.

Encounters

Two suspects were killed in separate encounters on Wednesday. An alleged robber was shot dead in an encounter in Surjani Town. The police said that the encounter took place in Khuda ki Basti when at least four men were mugging people. During an exchange of fire, three culprits managed to escape while one of them was killed. The body was taken to the Edhi morgue where the deceased was identified as 22-year-old Ashfaq Ahmed.

An alleged member of a Lyari gang was killed in an encounter in Phool Patti Lane, Lyari, on Tuesday.

When the gangsters saw law enforcer approaching, they opened fire and tried to escape but one of them was killed during the exchange of fire. He was identified as Hassan alias Hasu, who was wanted in several criminal cases.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 24^th, 2014.