been accepted. There’s no justification for observing a strike now.”
Besides, Khursheed Shah, the leader of opposition in the National Assembly, also said the MQM had the right to protest, but it should not give strike calls.
Later at a joint MQM coordination committee meeting held simultaneously in Karachi and London, it was decided that the party would withdraw the strike call for Monday and only observe a mourning day wherein commercial activities and public transport would not be affected.
CM welcomes decision
The chief minister welcomed the MQM’s decision to withdraw the strike call and said this step would help restore peace in Karachi.
Chief minister’s adviser Waqar Mehdi told The News that an impartial inquiry would be held into Alam’s case.
He added that PPP leaders were constantly in touch with the MQM leaders, including Haider Abbas Rizvi and Faisal Subzwari, at the protest outside the Chief Minister’s House.
Mehdi said the government and the MQM had held talks all night and that had yielded a positive result.
Funeral prayers
The funeral prayers of Faraz Alam and three other party activists, Muhammad Rehan, Abdul Rauf Mehmood and Dr Ali Akbar, were offered at the Jinnah Ground in Azizabad with many MQM leaders and activists present on the occasion.
A joint funeral prayer was offered for other slain MQM activists Naeem Jafri, Jaffar Abbas and Dr Yawar Hussain at the Rizvia Imambargah.
The bodies of Muhammad Rehan, Naeem Jafri and Jafar Abbas Jafri were found at a deserted location in Jumma Goth located along Mauripur Road.
Mochko SHO Chaudhry Saleem had said the victims were apparently subjected to torture and shot once in the back of the head.
The three men were activists of the MQM’s Mawach Goth Baldia sector. Rehan was also an employee of the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board.
They were kidnapped from Mauripur on January 5 and their families had filed complaints at the Mauripur police station.
Abdul Rauf was shot dead at his shop near the Shadab mosque in Block 11 of Federal B Area.
Child specialist Dr Akbar Ali was gunned down at his clinic in Block 5C of Paposh Nagar, and a few minutes later, two men on a motorcycle had arrived at homoeopath Yawar Hussain’s clinic near Khilafat Chowk and shot him in the head.
MQM coordination committee chief Qamar Mansoor, Dr Nusrat Shaukat, Amir Khan, Arif Khan Advocate, Syed Haider Abbas Rizvi, Kahiful Wara, Gulfaraz Khan Khattak, Aslam Afridi, Ghazi Salahuddin, and the party’s senators, MNAs, MPAs and office-bearers were among those who participated in the funeral.
Altaf criticises govt
MQM chief Altaf Hussain said the provincial government was not taking the extrajudicial killings of party activists seriously. He added that the MQM would pursue legal options if the killers were not arrested.
In a statement issued from the party’s London secretariat, Hussain said the law enforcement agencies were murdering MQM activists in the government’s torture cells.
He offered his sympathies to the bereaved families and urged them to exhibit patience. The MQM chief said religious extremism and sectarianism had spread in society like a cancer.