Pakistani family in UK seeks probe into killing in Punjab

LONDON: The family of a British Pakistani man, killed in a Faisalabad village have appealed to the Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif and Law Minister Rana Sanaullah to help trace the alleged killers who are on the run in Pakistan.
Mohammed Hanif Ather, 59, was brutally murdered in village number 482, Tehsil Samundri, District Faisalabad, on February 20, 2012 allegedly by his brother and nephews (both his brother’s and sister’s sons).
Shamim Saleem, 56, the victim’s sister from Glasgow, told The News that she suspected at least seven members of the family in Pakistan of either directly involvement in the killing or being part of the cover up.
According to the account provided by the victim’s family, a telephone call was made to them from Pakistan on February 20 informing them that the victim had “shot himself while cleaning his gun and had died from the wound”. The caller, who should have been grieving, showed odd behaviour by being calm and composed. Shamim rushed to Pakistan with her brother’s wife, son and brother-in-law to attend her brother’s funeral but after she landed in Pakistan for the burial, the events that transpired made her suspicious.
The family in Pakistan gave Shamim varying and conflicting accounts of the death including that the victim had died of a heart attack (this story was released to the local people); he died on the way to the hospital; he was cleaning his gun and shot himself by accident; thieves robbed him; and that the victim was drunk and accidentally shot himself. The suspects also tried to persuade Shamim not to carry out an autopsy but she preserved.
Shamim claims that the autopsy revealed that the victim had been poisoned; there were two bullets in his body; one bullet wound was above the groin area and a belt was placed over it; both bullets were fired at close range. “No-one accidentally shoots himself twice. When I went to the police station to ask the police to treat the death as a murder and to investigate the matter immediately, three suspects have absconded and we have no idea where they are. Since then another two have disappeared”, she told The News.
She said that the police was not taking an active interest in the investigation and the officers asked to help with the investigation seem preoccupied with other matters. In fact she was asked to provide money for diesel (which her brother-in-law paid), paper, pens and pencils before the police would finalise the report. “We want the police to help find the real cause behind my brother’s murder. I have been robbed of a caring and beloved brother.
We are heart-broken, we don’t ever think we can come to terms with what has happened. Nothing will bring back one of the most important men in our lives but a sense of peace will come to us if we know that the suspects have been tried and punished,” she appealed to the Chief Minister of Punjab Shahbaz Sharif.