KARACHI: A second eyewitness to the killing of Advocate Naimat Ali Randhawa, whose identity was withheld for security reasons, identified on Thursday Kazim Abbas Rizvi, a worker of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, as one of the killers in the court of a judicial magistrate, DawnNews reported.

The witness said he saw the suspect who was driving a motorbike fire gunshots at Advocate Randhawa.

Suspect Rizvi and the witness, with their faces muffled, were brought amid tightened security to the judicial magistrate’s court.

Earlier on Oct 5, the first eyewitness, whose identity was also withheld for security reasons, identified Rizvi as among the killers.

The first witness had rightly picked out the suspected killer from a set of dummies.

Rizvi, who was arrested on Sept 30, was earlier given in police custody till Oct 18 for interrogation and investigation.

On Oct 1, Karachi police chief Shahid Hayat had said that suspect Rizvi was associated with the Unit 178 of the MQM organisational structure, adding that during the initial investigation, the suspect had confessed to killing Advocate Randhawa.

He had said that the suspect had killed the lawyer for pursuing the case of TV reporter Wali Khan Babar who had been killed in 2011.

The suspect is also involved in targeted killings of eight other people, DIG Hayat had said during the Oct 1 briefing, adding that raids were being carried out to arrest three other accomplices of the suspect.

Police had claimed to have recovered a 9mm pistol with five rounds from Rizvi’s possession.

Randhawa, a senior lawyer, who was also a leader of the Pakistan Muslim League - Nawaz legal wing for Sindh, was shot dead in an attack in the North Nazimabad area on Sept 26. The attack had also left his son wounded.

Wali Babar, a journalist who worked for a private television channel, was gunned down in January 2011 in Liaquatabad. Several witnesses in the journalist’s murder were killed one after the other, developments which also attracted the apex court's attention.

The suspect’s arrest and the allegations levelled against him by DIG Hayat had drawn criticism from the MQM’s coordination committee.