KARACHI: A textile mills general manager belonging to the Ismaili community was shot dead along with his driver in a suspected sectarian attack in North Nazimabad behind a police station soon after he came out of his home on Wednesday, officials said.

They added that a police party present on the spot went after the suspected attackers and detained one of them, allegedly belonging to a banned sectarian outfit.

The officials said that 50-year-old Mohammed Karim left his home in a chauffeur-driven car in Block-D behind the North Nazimabad police station when armed motorcyclists attacked them and fled.

They sustained critical wounds and were taken to the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital, where doctors pronounced Karim and his 55-year-old driver Mohammed Nawaz dead on arrival.

A police party led by North Nazimabad DSP Afaq Ahmed chased the fleeing suspects and managed to detain a suspected hit man while another fled, the police claimed.

Karim was a general manager of the human resource department in a textile mills.

“The victim belonged to the Ismaili community and the incident appeared to be of sectarian nature,” said additional inspector general of police of Karachi Ghulam Qadir Thebo.

He added that the held suspect identified as Ishaq alias Hashim allegedly told interrogators that he belonged to Charsadda in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and had come to Karachi recently to target members of the Ismaili community.

The suspected hit man told the police that he belonged to the banned Sipah-i-Sahaba Pakistan and their outfit had formed two teams of hit men to carry out killings of Ismaili and Shia community members in Karachi. Mr Thebo said that Ishaq claimed that he belonged to Charsadda, but it transpired that he belonged to Karachi. Besides, all numbers in his seized mobile phone were traced back to Karachi, the police officer added.

However, the city police chief said the detention of the suspect from the spot was a major breakthrough and they hoped to get ‘leads’ from him that would help them bust their network of hit men.

Replying to a question, Mr Thebo claimed that this was a second targeted killing incident in the city in February. Previously, PPP leader Danish Ramzan who belonged to the Shia community was targeted in Gulshan-i-Iqbal.

“These are only two incidents of targeted killing out of 36 murders in this month of February so far,” the AIG Karachi said.

As compared to last year, 107 people were killed in the month of February and out of them 20 murders were targeted killings in nature.

Meanwhile, IG of the Sindh police Ghulam Hyder Jamali announced Rs500,000 reward for the North Nazimabad DSP and the police party, which detained the hit man after a chase.

The North Nazimabad police claimed to have seized a pistol and a motorbike from the possession of the held suspect.

Published in Dawn, February 19th, 2015

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