Weapon used in school principal’s murder was provided by cops

The weapon used in the December 9 murder of a school principal at the hands of her own husband was provided by two policemen, one of them still a trainee.

Police conducted a raid near the Jumman Shah Bukhari shrine located on Nishtar Road and confiscated the weapon used to murder the young mother from a policeman named Bilal Shams.

Ambreen Fatima, the headmistress of a private school, was shot dead in the wee hours of December 9 when she was returning home, located in the Soldier Bazaar locality, with her husband Ali-ul-Hassan from their relatives’ event.

FIR No 299/17 was registered at the Soldier Bazaar police station under Section 302, read with Section 34, of the Pakistan Penal Code on the complaint of Ambreen’s husband against unidentified suspects.

Hassan, the husband, had initially told the police that his wife was gunned down by unidentified men while he resisted their attempt to rob the couple.

During the course of investigation, the police learnt that the incident did not occur how the husband had described it to them and that the woman had been murdered.

When the investigators started suspecting Hassan’s involvement in the murder, they picked him up for questioning. During the police interrogation, the man confessed to murdering his wife.

Investigation Officer Sarfaraz Alliana told The News that an informant had spotted a man standing near the Jumman Shah Bukhari shrine on Nishtar Road and he was carrying a pistol that was used in Ambreen’s murder.

Alliana said a police party was immediately despatched to the spot, from where they caught the man and confiscated the weapon he was carrying, adding that the suspect disclosed his identity as Bilal Shams.

The IO said the police searched Shams and seized a 30-bore pistol with the weapon’s licence from him, adding that the licence was registered in the name of Gul Nawaz.

The officer said the police asked for Shams’s licence, but when the man failed to produce it, he was taken into custody, adding that the suspect later told them that he had provided the pistol to his sister Sehar, who had passed it on to Hassan.

FIR No 311/17 has been registered under sections 23(1)(a), 24 and 25 of the Sindh Arms Act on the complaint of IO Alliana against Shams, Danish Gul Nawaz, Gul Nawaz, Sehar and Hassan.

Shams and Danish are policemen, the latter of whom is still a trainee, said the officer, adding that according to Shams, he had got the weapon from his friend Danish.

Alliana said Shams told the police that Danish was fond of carrying a weapon with him and that he kept a licensed weapon of his father Gul Nawaz with him at all times.

Shams had asked Danish for the pistol after Sehar, Shams’s sister, had requested him to provide her with a weapon to give to Hassan for aerial firing, added the IO.

He said Danish was under training at the Sindh Police’s Razzakabad training centre, adding that the police had Gul Nawaz’s residential address and would pick up the man and his son Danish for further investigation.

The husband’s lie

According to Hassan’s original statement to the police, his wife was shot dead in front of him and their son by two muggers in Parsi Colony.

Soldier Bazaar SHO Rafay Tanoli had said two men riding a motorbike intercepted a car at around 2:30am and tried to snatch cash, mobile phones and other valuable items from the family.

One of the robbers shot 40-year-old Ambreen when he suspected that her husband was trying to pull out a gun, said the SHO, adding that the two muggers then fled.

The officer said that soon the police arrived on the scene and took Ambreen to the Dr Ruth Pfau Civil Hospital Karachi, where doctors pronounced her dead on arrival.

SHO Tanoli said the victim’s husband was trying to reach for the mobile phone that had slipped from his hand after his wife had handed it over to him.