KARACHI: The city
police chief on Monday claimed to have arrested the main hitman, who allegedly
killed the Geo News reporter Wali Khan Babar and evading the law for nearly ten
years. The press conference was jointly addressed by Sindh Information Minister
Nasir Hussain Shah.
Babar, aged 28, was
shot dead in the Liaquatabad neighborhood of Karachi while driving home from
office in the jurisdiction of the Super Market police station on January 13,
2011. The murder case was lodged the same day.
“Kamran alias
Zeeshan Shani, who is an activist of a local political party, carried out the
Babar’s cold-blooded murder and he was given death penalty by the ATC. However,
he successfully evaded law and remained an absconder till Monday. He was
arrested during a joint operation,” Memon said. “Kamran kept changing his
hideouts and finally on Monday morning, on the intelligence-based tipoff by a
federal agency, the Special Investigation Unit apprehended him with weapons.”
In order to evade arrest, the Kamran would regularly change his hideouts. The
Additional IG Karachi said that the suspect remained underground for five years
when police, intelligence agencies and the witnesses were actively pursuing
him. He eventually settled down in Gulshan-e-Maymar, with his family in the
comfort that the chase had gone cold.
In the meantime, the
Police had arrested five other suspects – Faisal Mehmood alias Nafsiyati,
Naveed alias Polka, Muhammad Ali Rizvi, Shahrukh alias Manni and Shakil Malik –
in the city on April 7, 2011. The City Police Chief further said that both
Kamran alias Shani and Faisal Mota were involved in the murder and they
received death sentences and added that the culprit has initially confessed to
four other murder cases “He will be interrogated further,” he said.
The police official
said that the case gained lot of attention, as Babar was a crime reporter of
Geo News and quite active in the field. Initially, there were eight accused and
among them one was identified as Liaquat Ali, who was killed in an encounter.
Memon said that several witnesses were murdered, including Rajab Bengali, who
was killed in 2011. Another ‘star’ witness Haider Ali, on whose testimony the
conviction took place was similarly killed in 2012. Advocate Naimat Ali
Randhawa was also murdered in September 2013 while he was pleading the case as
a special public prosecutor.
According to the
confession of Zeeshan, the police chief said MQM-London South Africa was
involved in the journalist’s murder. “Wali Babar was killed because he was
considered close to the Awami National Party (ANP) and would report anti-Altaf
Hussain stories,” he claimed. The suspect had joined the MQM (London) in 2008
and became part of Faisal alias Mota’s target killing gang.
Addressing media,
PPP minister Nasir Hussain Shah said that the ruling party in the province
believes in freedom of speech. “The government is taking action for injustice
against the journalists, no matter how old the case is,”; the minister said.
“Journalist Aziz Memon’s murder case was solved and the criminals were
arrested. I appreciate Karachi police chief Ghulam Nabi Memon, who solved the
case and worked this one out as well.”
An anti-terrorism
court in Karachi had awarded life imprisonment to four in Babar’s murder case
while Faisal alias Mota and Kamran alias Shani, were given death sentences in
absentia in 2014. Later Faisal alias Mota was arrested from Nine Zero, the
headquarters of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement in March 2015, while Kamran alias
Zeeshani Shani was on the run.
According to the
Committee to Protect Journalists, “Babar was shot shortly after his story
on gang violence aired on the country’s most widely watched broadcaster, Geo
TV.”
Newspaper: The News
