KARACHI: A soldier was shot dead in a suspected targeted attack in the presence of his family in the Bahadurabad area on Monday, police said.

They added that Lance Naik Adnan Abbasi, 47, was killed by an “unknown suspect due to unknown reason” near Mariam Masjid, Adamjee Nagar, at around 10pm when he was heading home on a motorcycle along with his wife and children.

A police spokesperson in a statement said that the suspect was wearing a helmet while his accomplice was standing at a ‘considerable distance’ from the place of the incident. The suspect opened fire on Adnan, ran towards his accomplice and managed to escape.

Adnan suffered critical bullet wounds and was taken to the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre where doctors declared him dead.

Karachi police chief Javed Odho told Dawn that the police were probing the incident from various angles. He opined that circumstances suggested it was a targeted attack, apparently motivated by personal enmity.

The suspects had been waiting for the victim for around 20 minutes and did not attempt to loot any bike rider passing through the area, though the investigators did not ‘completely’ rule out the possibility of a robbery, he added.

He said the family insisted on lodging the FIR under Section 302 (premeditated murder) of the Pakistan Penal Code, and not under a robbery-related section, which meant they had ‘some information’ about the killers.

Station Investigation Officer (SIO) Bahadurabad Amir Altaf told Dawn that the police had registered a murder case on the complaint of the family and an investigation had been launched.

Published in Dawn, December 10th, 2024