Police constable's killing in New Karachi being investigated from all angles: CTD

A Karachi police constable was shot dead on Monday near the Karwan-e-Hyderi Imambargah in New Karachi.

Syed Ahmed Abbas Rizvi, son of Syed Ghazanfer Mehdi, was posted at the New Karachi Police Station. An investigation into the incident is underway.

“Police are investigating the murder from three different angles,” Counter-terrorism Department (CTD) official Raja Umar Khattab told Dawn.

Police officials who visited the crime scene said the victim had drawn money from a bank and was travelling in a rickshaw with his father when armed men riding a motorcycle fired a single shot at him from close range. The constable was martyed on the spot.

Apart from a possible robbery, investigators are also looking at the case from the angle of targeted killing of the police official.

The possibility of the attack being a sectarian killing has not been ruled out either, the official told Dawn.

“Initial probe of the case revealed that there was no sign of resistance, therefore we are focusing more on terror and sectarian aspects behind the murder,” Khattab said.

This is the second such incident to take place in Karachi over the span of a week. Last week, a traffic police official was gunned down at Karachi's Matka Chowk by unidentified assailants.

The assailants had fled the scene towards Surjani Town after opening fire at Gulzar-i-Hijri Traffic Police Officer Muhammad Rafiq.

Discussing last week's killing, Khattab revealed that a newly established terrorist outfit "Hizbul Ahrar" had claimed responsibility for the murder but the police is not giving credence to such claims.

"This is partly because Hizbul Ahrar — in the same statement — had also claimed responsibility for terrorist activity in Sakran area of Balochistan on Oct 2. However, no such incident had occurred there," Khattab said.

Khattab further told Dawn that while this outfit had also claimed responsibility for some terrorist incidents in Punjab, the law enforcement agencies there were also not giving much importance to these claims.

The CTD official claimed that while Hizbul Ahrar had surfaced around two years ago, "there is no evidence that it exists in Karachi."