HYDERABAD: Several hundred emotionally charged mourners tried to enforce a shutdown in Kotri when the body of a violence victim, who was among the two persons shot dead in Hyderabad in the early hours of Wednesday, arrived in the town.

The violence had taken place during Jashn-i-Maulood-i-Kaaba — the birth anniversary of Hazrat Ali — at Kohi-i-Noor Chowk in Hyderabad.

The mourners, carrying the body of Waqar Dhawach, reportedly asked shopkeepers to pull down the shutters and attacked some outlets that did not oblige with stones. They also pelted the area office of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) on Liaquat Road with stones. Police remained baffled till late in the evening over how and why the violence broke out during the event but collected versions of various people present on the trouble spot.

It was gathered that small processions emerged from different localities of Hyderabad in the evening and converged on Kohi-i-Noor Chowk by around midnight. Participants in the event were playing Qawwalis, etc and also firing into the air throughout the route of their respective processions and all such jubilant activities reached their climax when they assembled at Koh-i-Noor Chowk, where they stayed on till sunrise. While the celebrations were under way and jubilant firing continuing intermittently, a scuffle between two groups of unknown people took place in the area and someone fired shots at people.

The guard of the City DSP, an ASI and 13 other people received gunshot wounds and two of them, constable Faisal Zai, 42, son of Shabbir Zai, and Waqar Dhawach, 20, son of Nisar, a resident of Kotri, succumbed to their wounds later. Waqar Dhawach was said to be an activist of a nationalist organisation. Sources in the Liaquat University Hospital, where he was admitted, said he received a bullet to his skull.

Area City SHO Imran Rasheed said the programme of the event was issued to the police station concerned and deployment was made accordingly. “But nobody knows how some of the participants turned violent,” he said, adding that a police constable lost his life and an ASI of his police station suffered bullet injuries in his leg while trying to control the situation.

The wounded victims were identified as ASI Adam Khan Khushik, Arshad, Mubarak, Sumair, Mohabbat, Shakir, Naveed, Junaid, Talha Lodhi, Tahir, Rehan, Umair Shah, Shahid and Sher Khan.

A journalist, Lala Rehman Samoon, who was returning home at about 2.30am was roughed up by a group of unruly men who stopped his car, smashed the windscreen and snatched his cellphone at Gymkhana Chowk.Neither the Hyderabad police nor any senior police officer issued any statement on the incident till late in the evening.An area resident told this reporter: “It all began when two white cars arrived at Koh-i-Noor Chowk and their occupants started dancing in the area and insisting that the other people around join them in the fun. Some of the car occupants had guns and they started firing into the air.”

He said a scuffle took place when they were restrained by some people from indulging in forcing others to follow them.

“One of the persons who was creating a scene was caught, given a severe beating and then taken to a nearby shrine,” he said.

He said more people then arrived there and tried to ransack pushcarts parked in the area and in the meantime gunshots were heard and there was a free-for-all.

“No one knew where the firing was done from because there were more than 1,000 people present at the Chowk,” he said.

Published in Dawn, May 15th, 2014