LAHORE: Death has been dancing in the streets of Karachi for a few decades now as along with thousands of civilians and personnel of law enforcement agencies, numerous important judicial, political, social and religious personalities have also been murdered in this magnificent metropolis during the last 20 years.
A research conducted by this correspondent reveals that on May 1, 1993, the then MQM Chairman, Azeem Ahmed Tariq, was murdered by unidentified gunmen at a safe house in Federal B Area of this city, which is ranked the 3rd-largest in the world in terms of population within city limits and the 11th largest when it comes to having continuous urban area linked by suburbs.
Late Azeem Ahmed Tariq's murder remains a mystery to this day.MQM Chief Altaf Hussain's 66-year old elder brother Nasir Hussain and his 28-year old nephew, Arif Hussain, had also met painful unnatural deaths in Karachi in December 1995.
As newspaper archives reveal, Nasir Hussain and Arif were arrested by the law enforcement agents on December 5, 1995. MQM officials had then stated that the two gentlemen killed were kept in a safe house, where they were brutally tortured for four days.
The father and son were reportedly killed on December 9, 1995 and their corpses were discovered from Gadap Town area of Karachi.A retired Sindh High Court judge, Justice Nizam Ahmed, and his son Advocate Nadeem Ahmed were shot dead in front of their PECHS Karachi residence on June 10, 1996. The killings were attributed to a dispute over a prized plot near Awami Markaz, as Justice Nizam Ahmed had opposed its commercialisation and illegal allotment.
A case was registered under Section 302 (premeditated murder) and 34 (common intentions) of the Pakistan Penal Code on the complaint of retired Group Captain Sikandar, the brother-in-law of Justice Nizam at Karachi's Ferozabad police station.
On September 20, 1996, late Premier Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's son and the then incumbent Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's younger brother, Mir Murtaza Bhutto, was allegedly killed in an encounter with police near his Clifton Karachi residence.
Murtaza was killed along with six other party activists. Among the dead was Ashiq Jatoi, the acting provincial chief of the Pakistan People's Party (Shaheed Bhutto Group). Jatoi was brother-in-law of Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi, a former caretaker prime minister of Pakistan.
Former Sindh governor and an eminent philanthropist, Hakim Muhammad Said was killed on October 17, 1998. His murderers were later caught by the then DIG Farooq Amin Qureshi, CCPO of Karachi. Several MQM workers were arrested and subsequently sentenced to death on this charge by an anti-terrorism court.
On December 21, 2001, the then Pakistani Interior Minister, Lt Gen (R) Moinuddin Haider's elder brother Ehteshamuddin Haider, was shot dead by assailants near Soldier Bazaar in Karachi.
On February 22, 2002, a renowned American journalist Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and murdered in Karachi by Al-Qaeda activists. On May 8, 2002, a bus bombing in Karachi killed 11 Frenchmen and three Pakistanis near the Sheraton Hotel.
According to "USA Today," the bomb had ripped through a Pakistan Navy bus as it was picking up the French nationals from the Sheraton Hotel. The French engineers were maintaining submarines for the Pakistani government. Members of the touring New Zealand cricket team, who were staying at the Pearl Continental Hotel across the street, remained safe but authorities back home in Wellington immediately called off the tour.
"The USA Today" had reported on September 8, 2002 that one Mufti Mohammed Sabir was later arrested near a bus terminal after arriving from Rawalpindi in connection with this incident.
On October 3, 2003, six employees of Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (Suparco) were killed, when their official van was fired upon on Hub River Road in Mauripur, Karachi.
On May 30, 2004, a senior Deobandi religious scholar and head of Islamic religious school, Jamia Binoria, Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai, was gunned down in his car while leaving his home in Karachi.
On June 10, 2004, gunmen opened fire on a convoy carrying the then Karachi Corps Commander Lt Gen Ahsan Saleem Hyat, leaving 11 people dead. The Corps Commander had escaped unhurt, though a few of his security staffers had lost lives in the incident.
On March 2, 2006, a powerful suicide car bomb attack in the high security zone near the US Consulate in Karachi had killed four people, including a US diplomat. This was just a day before the then American President George W. Bush was to land in Pakistan.
On April 11, 2006, over 50 people, including a few prominent Sunni (Barelvi) scholars, were killed in a bomb explosion at a religious gathering celebrating the birth anniversary of Prophet Muhammad in Karachi's Nishtar Park.
On June 15, 2006, unidentified gunmen had killed a senior prison official, Amanullah Khan Niazi, and four others in Karachi.
On July 14, 2006, Allama Hassan Turabi, a key Shia religious scholar and chief of Tehrik-e-Jafaria Pakistan, and his 12-year-old nephew were killed in a suicide attack near their Abbas Town residence.
On August 1, 2010, an MQM MPA Raza Haider was shot dead in the Nazimabad area. Raza Haider was reportedly in Nazimabad to attend the funeral of a relative, when six unidentified gunmen opened fire on him.
While Karachi's SSP Chaudhry Aslam Khan had survived a September 9, 2011 attack at his Defence Housing Authority residence, a prominent Shia leader Askari Raza was shot dead in a sectarian-motivated target killing on January 1, 2012. Raza was a leader of the Pasban-e-Jaferia.
On January 9, 2013, a famous private school owner Engineer Syed Ali Hyder Jafri was killed in Sector 11-A of North Karachi. The police had described this incident as a "sectarian attack."
On January 16, 2013, another MQM legislator in Sindh Assembly, Syed Manzar Imam, was killed by six unidentified gunmen in Karachi's Orangi Town area. (Reference: Daily Jang)
And the last murder in this series was witnessed yesterday (June 21) when yet another provincial MQM lawmaker Sajid Qureshi and his young son were assassinated at a juncture when both PPP and MQM were striving hard to shun their differences.
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