'Delayed' justice: Warrants issued for arrest of suspects in decade-old murder of jailer

KARACHI:

An anti-terrorism court issued on Monday non-bailable warrants for the arrest of as many as a dozen absconding suspects in a decade-old killing case of a jailer and his aides.

The warrants were issued for notoriously famed Saeed alias Bharam, Irfan alias Banna, Sajid alias Sajju, Naeem alias Chikna and eight others as the ATC-IX accepted the charge sheet against the recently arrested Ubaid Khursheed alias K2, an alleged worker of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM). The deputy superintendent of Karachi Central Jail, Amanullah Niazi, and five others were killed in an ambush on his convoy near Mobile Market in Saddar in July 2006.

After the acceptance of the supplementary challan, Khursheed is set to be charged as the fourth suspect after Chaudhry Sajjad, Tanvir alias Chand and Abu Irfan in the murder case under the anti-terrorism act. According to the investigation report, which was based Khursheed's revelations, jailer Niazi was gunned down allegedly because he did not succumb to the demands of the inmates belonging to the party. These inmates included Saulat Ali Khan alias Saulat Mirza, who was recently hanged.

The report stated that a dozen suspects divided in three groups chased Niazi all the way from Jamshed Road and fired at his vehicle as it stopped at a signal before a church in Saddar. Saeed, who allegedly commanded a target killing team in the city, gave orders to kill the jailer and supervised the murder plot, said the report.

The court has fixed May 25 as the date for the next hearing of the case, directing the investigation officer to arrest the absconding suspects.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 19^th, 2015.