KARACHI: A retired army officer was shot dead in a suspected targeted attack in the Baloch Colony area on Wednesday, police and witnesses said.

Two passersby were also wounded in the firing.

Retired Lt Col Tahir Zia Nagi, 68, arrived at Hafeez Centre near the Baloch Colony bridge in a car. He parked his car there and when he stepped out of it, a motorcyclist opened fire on him and rode away, said Gulshan-i-Iqbal SP Dr Fahad Ahmed.

The former army officer and two passersby — Mohammed Rehan and Momin Khan — sustained multiple bullet wounds and were taken to the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, where doctors pronounced Mr Nagi as dead on arrival, said Dr Seemin Jamali, executive director of the JPMC.

Rehan had sustained a bullet wound in the chest while Momin was shot in a leg, added Dr Jamali.

Later on, the ex-army officer’s body was shifted to the Civil Hospital Karachi for a post-mortem examination as the JPMC’s mortuary was closed for reconstruction.

He had sustained six bullet wounds on the face, head, neck and abdomen, said additional police surgeon of the CHK Dr Qarar Ahmed Abbasi. All bullets were fired from his right side, added the medico-legal officer.

“It appeared to be a targeted killing incident,” said SP Ahmed, adding that spent bullet casings fired from a 9mm pistol were found at the crime scene and sent to the police’s forensic laboratory to see if the same weapon had been used in past targeted killing incidents.

The victim drove from his home in Defence Housing Authority to his private institute located in Hafeez Centre. He had retired as lieutenant colonel from the army in 1996.

He had established a private institute, where he trained candidates for tests for recruitment in the armed forces, said Dr Ahmed.

LJA claim

The outlawed Lashkar-i-Jhangvi Al-Almi (LJA) reportedly claimed responsibility for killing retired Lt Col Tahir Zia, but the police’s Counter-Terrorism Dep­art­ment officials doubted the veracity of the claim.

“As usual, LJA spokesperson Ali bin Sufyan has claimed responsibility for killing the former army officer but the authenticity of such claims remains doubtful,” said Raja Umer Khattab, an official of the CTD. He said the former army officer was a ‘soft target’.

He had been running the Nagi institute for training of aspiring soldiers for the last 10 years and someone might have observed his routine as he usually arrived at Hafeez Centre at the same time.

Mr Khattab, who has been investigating terrorism cases in the metropolis, suspected the involvement of some other banned outfits, particularly the militant Islamic State group, in the killing.

He said he believed that a ‘small network’ of IS in the city might have targeted the retired officer.

The CTD officer said that IS’s local chief Amir Abdullah and IS’s ‘militant wing’ head Tahir Minhas, alias Saeen, lived in the same area of Baloch Colony.

Tahir Saeen is considered the mastermind of the Safoora Goth carnage in which over 40 members of the Shia Ismaili community were killed in a gun attack on the community’s bus in 2015.

Saad Aziz, who was awarded death sentence by a military court for his involvement in the Safoora Goth bus carnage and murder of prominent human rights activist Sabeen Mahmud, had told the members of a joint investigation team (JIT) that when the IS announced ‘caliphate’ in Iraq in 2014, Tahir Minhas, Haider Abbasi and he were inspired by that militant outfit because Al Qaeda been ‘weakened.’

He had also told the JIT that Abdullah had asked them to watch a video before carrying out massacre of Ismaili community members, according to contents of the JIT report.

Published in Dawn, April 6th, 2017