HYDERABAD, June 7: Four brothers were gunned down while their fifth brother and a passer-by suffered gunshots wounds in an apparent act of revenge in Hussainabad on Friday.

The brothers identified as Asif, 24, Bilawal, 19, Ghulam Murtaza, 25, and Wali Mohammad, 38, and their father, Mohammad Usman Solangi, were ambushed early in the morning when they were on way to a court to attend the hearing of a murder case in which Solangis faced charges of killing a young boy, Ali Mohammad Abbasi, in a clash over a petty issue between the groups of the two communities in Hussainabad on Jan 16 this year.

Usman Solangi has seven sons and the murder case was lodged against all seven brothers in the same month.

The fifth brother, Zulfikar Solangi, was injured and operated upon at the Liaquat University Hospital (LUH) while the bodies were handed over to relatives after a post-mortem examination.

The pedestrian identified as Sarwar Lakhari sustained injuries while Usman himself and his sixth son, Mohammad Ali, escaped unhurt.

The seventh son is in jail in the same case as he was picked before he could seek bail. The other brothers had obtained pre-arrest bail from additional district judge-III and were going on motorcycles to attend hearing of their bail application when they were ambushed at Hussainabad Chowk.

According to survivor, Mohammad Ali, when their motorcycles slowed down along an uneven and inundated patch on the road, a gang of armed assailants appeared from somewhere and sprayed them with bullets. But luckily he and his father remained unhurt.

Usman Solangi has accused Murad Abbasi, father of Ali Mohammad Abbasi who was killed in the clash and Murad’s brother, Mistri Abbasi who was said to be a policeman, and his relative Sajid Abbasi of the murder of his sons. “When my sons fell on the road they were made to run and were then fired upon,” he said.

Abbasis and Solangis live side by side in Hussainabad. Abbasis’ houses were found locked after the murders and a heavy contingent of police was deployed there to avert further bloodshed.

Abbasis had torched a house of a Solangi man in the wake of murder of Ali Mohammad Abbasi in January but no casualty was reported at that time.

Among the deceased brothers, Wali Mohammad was married and worked in a private company and Ghulam Murtaza was also married.

Enraged relatives of the deceased forced shopkeepers in the area to pull down shutters, staged a sit-in and demanded arrest of assailants. Some protesters forced a Karachi-bound train to stop and pelted it with stones but luckily no one was hurt.

According to PPP MPA Jam Khan Shoro, he along with PPP leader Abdul Jabbar Khan had personally approached Murad Abbasi during his election campaign in the area.

He had offered him condolences and tried to persuade him to settle the dispute through dialogue, he said. “Murad sought time and he rather deliberately dragged it. And now this tragic incident has taken place,” he said.

Police have reportedly picked up one Qurban Abbasi in connection with the murders while jail authorities released Allah Dino Solangi, Usman’s seventh son, from central prison on parole to attend funeral of his brothers, who were buried in a local graveyard.

No FIR for quadruple murder has so far been lodged.