LAHORE, Oct 17: A youth committed suicide after killing a second-year student of Kinnaird College at the pedestrian bridge in front of the prestigious seat of learning for women on Jail Road here on Monday, witnesses and police said.

Samar Wasti, 18, had reportedly declined 22-year-old Shams Alam’s proposal for marriage.

The girl’s father, a Pakistan Railways (PR) employee posted in Faisalabad, said that his daughter phoned him after 1pm and complained that a youth was chasing her. He claimed that she was still on the line when he heard gunshots. Thereafter, he said, he never heard any word from his daughter.

The firing which also left injured an elderly motorcyclist, who was passing by, triggered panic among college students, motorists and passers-by and subsequently led to a 45-minute traffic congestion on Jail Road.

Civil Lines Division SP Muhammad Omer Saeed told Dawn that Alam, of Jinnah Colony, Sargodha, first shot at and killed the teenaged girl and then committed suicide with the same weapon at the pedestrian bridge outside the college.

Quoting witnesses, the SP said the suspect reached the college at closing time. He stalked his victim as she walked home, before attacking her in the staircase of the bridge. He said the police seized empty shells of bullets and the pistol used by the youth from the crime scene and shifted the bodies for autopsies.

SP Saeed said Alam lived with his paternal uncle in Chungi Amar Sidhu and worked with a local IT company.

He said that it was premature to say that Samar and Alam studied together and that he had proposed her ever.

Naheed Wasti told this reporter that his daughter was staying at her maternal aunt’s house on Wandala Road, Shahdara.

Naheed, a PR assistant accounts officer, said Samar complained to him before Eidul Fitr that a youth used to stalk her and also make her phone calls.

On Monday, he said, she phoned him after 1pm and complained that the youth was again after her. “I asked my daughter to bring the youth on her cell and during conversation I advised him not to tease his daughter. I also invited him to solve the matter in a sitting. My daughter cried the suspect was carrying a gun and then I heard several gunshots,” he said.

Naheed said during his posting in Lahore, his daughter passed matriculation from Model Town’s Cathedral School and there was a possibility that Alam might have been studying in the same school. He said they did not know the youth and he was just teasing his daughter.

Ahmad Iqbal, an employee of a nearby private hospital, said firing of five gunshots triggered panic among people who initially thought it an act of terrorism. He said the people desperately ran for shelters to save their lives.

The SP said 60-year-old Bashir, of Al-Faisal Town, Jorray Pull in Cantonment, also received a bullet while he was passing by on his bike and was shifted to Services Hospital.

The Racecourse police registered a case under sections 302 and 324 of the Pakistan Penal Code against Alam on the complaint of Naheed Wasti.

Meanwhile, the Kinnaird College has announced that the institution would remain closed on Tuesday (today) to mourn the death of its student.