Slain Hamdard varsity student’s father identifies shooter

The father of medical student Misbah Athar who was killed during a mugging bid in Gulshan-e-Iqbal identified a suspect as the shooter during an identification parade before a judicial magistrate on Tuesday.

Athar Ahmed pointed to Muhammad Nabi Afghani as the robber who fired shot at her daughter, third-year MBBS student, during a robbery when they were waiting at the bus stop near Moti Mahal for her Hamdard University bus to arrive.

The suspect was lined up among 10 people referred to as dummies in judicial terminology in the court of the East district’s JM-VII and the father of the deceased was asked to identify the shooter as an eyewitness.

The suspect was arrested recently on October 9. Holding a press conference, East district SSP Azfar Mahesar had said the suspect had confessed to his crime and told the police that he along with his accomplice, Qari Bashir, had killed the student.

“Till last year, he [Afghani] used to pick or collect [useful items from] garbage on the streets of Karachi, but after that he started committing crimes by first stealing the batteries of cars and then committing street crime,” Mahesar explained.

The arrested suspect had also allegedly admitted to his involvement in various cases of street crime in the limits of the Gulshan-e-Iqbal, Gulistan-e-Jauhar, Mobina Town, Sharea Faisal, Bahadurabad, Aziz Bhatti, Sachal and SITE Super Highway police stations.

According to an uncle of the victim, Kashif Ahmed, for the past three years his brother Athar Ahmed had been driving his 24-year-old daughter to the bus stop near Mochi Morr, where she used to catch a bus for the varsity.

“They were sitting in the car this morning waiting for the bus when two men riding a motorcycle came close to the driver’s seat and one of them snatched Athar’s mobile phone,” said Kashif.

One of the suspects later fired a single shot that hit Misbah in the head near her eye, critically wounding her. She was immediately taken to a nearby private hospital, where doctors pronounced her dead on arrival. Her body was then taken to Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre for medico-legal formalities. The JM after recording the proceedings of the identification parade adjourned the hearing till October 17.