In a heart-wrenching incident on Friday, a father, doctor by profession, gunned down his teenage daughter and her friend in the Sacchal area of Karachi.
The tragic incident took place in Bakhar Goth near Abul Hassan Ispahani Road within the jurisdiction of the Sacchal police station.
Responding to the information that two persons had been injured in a car after a firing incident, police and rescue workers reached the scene where they found a young man dead inside the vehicle.
Police said that after the firing incident, the girl’s father and brother took her body from the car to their home that was situated nearby. Police retrieved her body from the house.
Both the bodies were transported to Abbasi Shaheed Hospital for medico-legal formalities where the girl was identified as 17-year-old Laraib and her male friend as Hassan, 24.
Police later arrested the girl’s father, Dr Rafiq Shaikh, and his son Abdullah over the murders. The father reportedly confessed to committing the double murder for honour. Sohrab Goth Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Chaudhry Sohail Faiz said Dr Shaikh was worried after his daughter did not return home at night. He left the house to trace her and spotted her along with Hassan in a car on the corner of his house’s street on Abul Hassan Ispahani Road.
The DSP said the father, who was carrying a pistol, got infuriated upon seeing them in the car and opened fire on them, leaving both of them dead.
The police recovered over half a dozen empty shells of pistols from the crime scene. “Doctor Rafiq has confessed to his crime,” DSP Faiz said, adding that the police were investigating whether the father had acted alone in the firing incident or if his son was also involved as an accomplice in the shooting as the police had found two 9mm pistols from the crime scene.
The officer explained that the police were trying to verify the ownership of the second pistol used in the incident as it might be possible that the deceased young man was also carrying a pistol with him.
Once the licences were verified, the situation would become clear, the DSP said. He added that the deceased Hassan was a resident of Gulshan-e-Iqbal and he had come to drop Laraib at her house.
“They [Laraib and Hassan] were talking while seated in Hassan's SUV when the tragic incident occurred,” the officer explained. No case had been registered till the filing of this news story.
