KARACHI, Feb 17: A young man shot and critically wounded himself in Saeedabad on Tuesday night, moments after he had shot dead the cousin he wanted to marry, witnesses and police said.

The police said the 25-year-old suitor, Asif, wanted to marry the daughter of his maternal uncle, who rejected his proposal.

They said the desperate man came to the house of his uncle and opened fire on Shakila, killing her instantly. The police said the young man then shot himself in the abdomen.

They said the girl’s father took the body of his daughter and the wounded suitor to the Civil Hospital.

Sources in the hospital’s medico-legal section told Dawn that the young woman received two bullets in her upper torso. The bullet that hit her in the chest proved fatal.

They said that the young man inflicted a bullet wound on his abdomen and he was in a critical condition.

The SP of SITE, Mohammed Ali Wasaan, told Dawn that the suspect, belonging to the Katchi-Memon community, resorted to such an extreme act after his proposal for his cousin was rejected.

The police have seized the weapon used in the crime and said the suspect was under arrest in the hospital.

No case was, however, registered till late in the night.

Body found

The body of a young man was found in the bushes at a desolate place near Dhani Bux Goth, a shantytown in Sohrab Goth.

The body was shifted to the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital, where sources said the victim, who appeared in his mid-20s, was shot once to his head from point-blank range as the bullet went through the skull.

The police said the victim was killed somewhere else by culprits who threw his body at a desolate place as no bullet casing was found near the body.

The body was later kept at Edhi’s morgue as the victim remained unidentified.

Acid attack

The Orangi Town police booked and arrested a woman for injuring three men by throwing acid on them.

The police said Sarfraz, Arif and Shahid were injured when the suspected attacker, Salma, threw acid on them.

They said the woman was a divorcee and Sarfraz had promised to marry her. The police said the woman threw acid on Sarfaraz and his friends, who were sitting near her home in Jinnah Colony, when he went back on his word.

The police registered a case (FIR 138/09) against Salma, daughter of Siraj, under Section 337-L of the Pakistan Penal Code on Sarfaraz’s complaint.

The injured were shifted to the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital, where sources said they had received acid burns on their limbs.

Lyari tense

Parts of the mafia-infested Lyari remained in the grip of tension and fear as two persons were wounded in scattered incidents of firing on Tuesday.

Witnesses said Baghdadi was the worst affected locality, where a 25-year-old man was shot and wounded.

The wounded man, identified as Baba, son of Ghafoor, was a resident of Bihar Colony. He was shifted to the Civil Hospital, where sources said the victim was in a stable condition as he did not receive a life-threatening injury.

A 55-year-old woman was wounded when she received a stray bullet while she was on the rooftop of her house in Bihar Colony.

The Kalri police said the victim was moved to the Civil Hospital, where sources said she had received a bullet wound in her arm. They said the wounded woman, Saira Khatoon, was released from the hospital after treatment.

The SP of Lyari, Rana Perwaiz, said the police had worked out a strategy to contain the ongoing gang warfare in the vicinity. “We have set up pickets at sensitive points and intensified patrolling in the affected areas,” he added.

Violent protest

At least four people, including a Rangers’ sepoy, were injured during a violent protest near Janjaal Goth, a shantytown in the limits of Gulshan-i-Maymar police.

The police said shantytown residents staged a violent protest when a team of the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board reached the spot to build a boundary wall around its plot adjacent to the Maymar graveyard.

The protesters, they said, claimed that the civic utility was illegally occupying the land of the graveyard.

The police said the residents had an altercation with KWSB staff and they also scuffled with the security guards accompanying the utility’s officials.

They said the Rangers also arrived at the spot and the protesters pelted them with stones.

They police said a few teargas shells were fired to disperse the unruly mob, and three people were injured in the trouble.