Jobless man hangs himself after shooting wife, three kids dead

In a heart-wrenching incident, a man distressed due to unemployment and financial troubles killed his three minor children and wife before committing suicide at a residential apartment near the Karachi airport on Monday.

Investigations indicate that the man had been unemployed for the past around four months, which led to the horrifying incident at Falak Naz Apartments located near Wireless Gate on Sharea Faisal.

The authorities were informed by neighbours as soon as the bodies were discovered, and rescue teams along with police reached the property. The casualties were transported to Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre for autopsies where the man was identified as Ahsan Rizvi, his wife as Nida Rizvi, two sons as Jibrael, Mikail and a daughter as Ume Hani.

The initial findings of the police suggest that Rizvi allegedly killed his wife and children and then hanged himself. Before taking his own life, he also wrote a letter.

“Overall, everything has been observed and the crime scene inspection has also been completed,” said District Malir SSP Tariq Mastoi while talking to The News. “The weapon used has been recovered by the police, and its forensic examination is underway.” SSP Mastoi said that according to the initial investigations, the family had been under significant financial distress.

“Frequent arguments and disputes were common in the household, especially after the closure of the garment business,” SSP Mastoi explained. “Also, they were unable to pay the rent to the landlord, which eventually led him to take this drastic step of ending his family and then committing suicide.”

Police reached the property after getting information through Madadgar Police Helpline 15 about the incident. “When we arrived, we found three children and their mother’s bodies on a bed while the man responsible for the incident had hanged himself,” said SHO Irfan Asif who first reached the spot. “Initially, it was discovered that the man had first shot his wife and children, causing their deaths before committing suicide by hanging.” The weapon used in the crime has been found at the crime scene and a letter has also been discovered and us currently under examination by the forensic department.

Neighbours said Rizvi used to work in the garment sector but had been unemployed from around four months. “It was a good family, but due to financial issues and unemployment, they were quite disturbed,” said a neighbour. However, no one could have anticipated that something like this would happen. “When we heard the gunshots, it felt like something was wrong. We immediately informed the police, and when they arrived, the scene was unimaginable.”

Rizvi left a note in a diary before committing suicide. The note was written in the Roman script. The suspect asked that a word file saved on his laptop be opened. “I, Syed Ahsan Raza Rizvi, am committing suicide and killing my wife and children,” the note reads. “Make sure to check the word file on the laptop’s desktop.” The note further reads: “In the word file, I have calculated the total amount related to the financial transactions involving everyone, added that my children and Nida are martyred. They had no idea that I would do something like this. Sorry, Sami, I had no other easy way.”

The police also obtained the word file, in which Ahsan mentioned borrowing a small amount of money from two to three relatives and friends. Police said they had contacted relatives of the family to hand over the bodies to them for burial.

Murder-suicide incidents take place every now and then in Karachi and other parts of the country due to financial problems. On December 16 last year, 40-year-old Mashkoor shot dead his wife, Rakhshanda, 35, inside their home in Gulshan-e-Qadri and later ended his life by shooting himself. Before the incident, Mashkoor started shouting from a window of his rented house, asking his neighbours to call the media. After receiving information about him, a police team rushed to the scene and tried to prevent him from taking any drastic step. However, in the meantime, the police heard three gunshots from the locked room of the house. The police entered the first-floor house and found the bodies of a man and woman lying in a pool of blood. They also found their two-year-old child, who remained safe in the incident.

On March 16 last year, a two-year-old girl died as a family attempted suicide in Karachi’s Surjani Town due to financial difficulties resulting from unemployment.

A long-time unemployed man, Azhar, took extreme measures after being fed up with the worsening financial conditions and poisoned his two young daughters, wife and himself. The family fell unconscious after consuming the poison and was shifted to Abbasi Shaheed Hospital where the younger daughter died during treatment. The other family members survived.

On November 29, 2022, a man brutally killed his wife and three minor daughters and tried to commit suicide, but survived, in his rented Malir locality home. The victims were identified as Huma, 40, her three minor daughters — Neha, 16, Fatima, 12, and Nimra, 10.