Woman, daughter among three shot dead

Three people including two women and a man were killed by some unidentified assailants in the Sector F-10 of the federal capital on Tuesday. The incident took place in the Shalimar Police precincts at around 11:20am. A police official told this scribe that two women, Najma, 40, and her daughter Sidra, 18, along with a man named Nazeer, 28, were returning from a court where Najma was seeking a divorce, when they were attacked by gunmen. He said their car (registration # SS-149) came under gunfire near Sector F-10 roundabout and that all of them died on the spot while the attackers escaped from the crime scene. He said the women hailed from Attock district and the slain man was from Loralai district but they all were temporarily living in Rawalpindi.
The bodies of the slain people were brought to Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences for their autopsies. Sub Inspector (SI) Jamsheed Khan also confirmed that the deceased man was their friend and suspected enmity could also be the motive behind the killings. He said the police would investigate the case from every possible angle. Meanwhile, hospital sources told Pakistan Today that they retrieved 15 bullets from Najma’s body, 14 from Sidra’s while 4 from Nazeer’s. Police later handed over the bodies to the heirs. Shalimar Police Station House Officer (SHO) Rasheed Niazi said that police would register FIR after completing the legal formalities. AFP ADDS: “It is a matter of personal enmity. The woman was fighting a divorce case against her husband and we assume that he managed to kill them,” said police investigator Jamshed Khan.
“We are yet to obtain further information about the gunmen. A witness told us they were speaking Punjabi but we don’t have more details,” he said. While Pakistan suffers appalling statistics on crimes against women, such attacks in broad daylight in the wealthy capital are rare. Almost 1,500 women were murdered in Pakistan last year, according to the Aurat Foundation, a local organisation working to protect women. Another 500 were the victims of “honour killings”, in which relatives and other fellow tribesmen kill a woman if they believe she had an affair.