The Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) will observe a day of mourning on Friday after four bodies recovered from Karachi’s Memon Goth area off the Superhighway a day earlier were identified Thursday as those of its activists.
The party announced that it would stage peaceful protests against what it calls extra-judicial killings and kidnappings of its activists.
Reports of aerial firing and shutting down of shops were received as the situation turned tense in several areas of the city. Moreover, enraged persons resorted to stone-pelting and rioting outside the cold storage facility. After the bodies were identified as members of the MQM, a large number of the party’s Rabita Committee, office-bearers and relatives of the deceased gathered at the cold storage where the bodies were kept.
Relatives demanded a high-level investigation into the deaths. MQM spokesman Wasay Jalil claimed that six party members were ‘arrested’ from County Garden scheme 33 off Abul Ispahani Road in Gulshan-i-Iqbal area of the city on April 13, adding that four of the activists were identified whereas two were still missing.
Speaking about the four workers whose bodies had been identified, Jalil claimed that three of the activists belonged to the party’s Gulshan-i-Iqbal sector. The bodies were recovered from a desolate location near the Superhighway in Memon Goth area of Karachi and bore torture marks. The victims were identified as Sameed, Salman, Faizan and Ali Hiader.
Police had said the victims appeared to have been kidnapped from somewhere else and later brought to the spot where they were shot dead.
