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Tuesday February 18, 2025

Two years on, slain KU teacher Dr Waheed’s family still waiting for justice

By Zeeshan Azmat
April 30, 2017

The second death anniversary of Dr Syed Waheed-ur-Rehman, who was widely known as Yasir Rizvi, was observed on Saturday. 

Teachers, journalists and civil rights activists organised different programmes, including one at the Karachi Press Club, in remembrance of the journalist-turned-academician, . They demanded of the government to immediately arrest Rehman's killers and compensate his family.

Despite tall claims of the Sindh government, neither the grieved family of the slain teacher has been compensated nor have his killers been arrested until today.

An unbiased and committed voice among the teaching community and journalism circles, Rehman, 42, was silenced on April 29, 2015 when six men ridding three motorcycles gunned him down near the Karachi Institute of Heart Diseases in Block 16 of Federal B Area.

Assistant professor Syed Waheed-ur-Rehman had left his flat in Lateef Square Apartments in Federal B Area and he was heading towards the University of Karachi when the attackers intercepted his Suzuki Cultus and fired gunshots at him.

He was a member of the University of Karachi’s faculty of the mass communication department and working as a grade BPS-19 employee.

His body was shifted to the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital for an autopsy and later taken to the Edhi morgue.

His funeral prayers were offered after at Masjid-e-Ghufran located behind the KIHD and he was buried at the Yaseenabad graveyard in the presence of several teachers, journalists, relatives, friends and neighbours.

Rehman used Yasir Rizvi as his pen-name during his career as a journalist. Later, his friends, colleagues and many others identified him with his pen-name. The slain teacher left behind a widow and two daughters. 

The Sindh government has not compensated the teacher’s family despite its tall claims. The teaching and journalistic fraternity has been demanding of the authorities to arrest the killers but not significant progress has been observed in his murder case. 

The KU syndicate, however, passed a resolution after Rehman’s first death anniversary to provide some financial support to his family.

The teaching community had pushed the KU administration and its syndicate to come up with its own plan rather than waiting for the Sindh government to fulfil its promise.

Dr Shakeel Farooqi, president of Karachi University Teachers’ Society, commented: “Dr Syed Waheed-ur-Rehman aka Yasir Rizvi was a champion of harmony and unity among different factions of society and remained a supporting hand for victims of discrimination and neglect.”

Dr Farooqi also expressed his disappointment over failure of the government in bringing his murderers to justice as well as acknowledging the services of the journalist-turned-academician.

He said even two years after Rehman’s assassination, the Sindh government could not fulfil its promise of compensating his family.

He said it was cheaper to be killed as a university teacher in Sindh as compared to any other province in the country. 

“Dr Basheer A Channar of the Sindh University was murdered in 2012, Dr Shakeel Auj of the Karachi University was gunned downed in 2014, and Dr Syed Waheed-ur-Rehman was assassinated in 2015. The government has not compensated their families despite making promises.”

On the other hand, he said, the provincial governments of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa had given rupees five to seven million to grieved families of professors who were killed in the two provinces.

Dr Farooqi, who is also secretary general of the Federation of All Pakistan Universities Academic Staff Association, Sindh chapter, demanded that the families of slain professors in Sindh must be compensated immediately and their murderers must be apprehended without any further delay.

He announced that representatives from all the public sector universities in Sindh would meet in Mehran University of Engineering and Technology, Jamshoro on May 4 to discuss a plan of action to have their demands accepted.