950830

Allege killing due to rangers' indiscriminate firing

Daughter, son expose

PTV lie dubbing old

fathers as terrorists

RECORDER REPORT

HYDERABAD: "My seventy-year old father Mukhtar Shaikh was murdered in cold blood by the Rangers on August 24 and yet the PTV had the audacity to announce on the national hook-up that two terrorists had been killed by the law enforcement agencies.

This was stated by Ms. Rizwana Mukhtar, daughter of Mukhtar Shaikh who died in his house as a result of firing during the second day of MQM protest on Thursday at Khata Chowk.

Rizwana told a crowded press conference at the Hyderabad Press Club here on Wednesday that her father was a respectable and law abiding businessman with no political affiliation and was also a member of the executive committee of Anjuman-e-Tajran, Shahi Bazar.

Narrating her woeful tale in presence of about half a dozen women of the locality, she said that the entire area of New Cloth Market, Khata Chowk, Chetal Gharhi and Peshawari Mohalla were surrounded by the Rangers on Thursday morning, where her house is located on the main road.

She said all of sudden, the Rangers resorted to direct firing on the houses located in the locality and all the residents closed their doors. She said after some time some one knocked at the door of her house which frightened the family, but her father mustered courage and opened the door, where an officer of Rangers along with sepoys was present.

She said the Rangers wanted to establish a check post on the roof of the house, which was refused by her father.

She said a burst was fired on her house and a bullet after shattering the windopane, hit her father who fell on the ground and started bleeding profusely.

She said the close-by Memon Hospital was contacted on telephone and requested to send an ambulance.

She said, the hospital management first refused to send the ambulance in view of intense firing but on repeated appeals, the hospital finally agreed to despatch the ambulance.

She said, when the ambulance arrived Rangers also fired on the ambulance as a result of which its driver Rasheed was seriously injured and is still lying in the hospital.

She said, her mother braved the firing and came at the window and in her mother tongue (Punjabi) appealed to the Rangers in the name of God to allow the ambulance to come near. But the Ranger did not pay any heed and continued to fire on the house.

She said, thereafter the family decided that wheatever the consequences, her father must be removed to hospital and took him to the ambulance, but he died on his way to Memon Hospital.

She regretted that the PTV in its 9 0 clock news announced that two terrorists had been killed in the locality.

She appealed to the Information Minister Khalid Ahmed Kharal to suspend those PTV officers who had telecast a false news and called upon the President and Prime Minister to order the registration of an FIR against the Rangers.

Another Press Conference

In another press conference Nadeem Memon s/o deceased Iqbal Memon, who also died the same day in the same locality and in the same manner, has also protested against the attitude of the PTV which had branded his father as a terrorist.

He told newsmen that his father had a readymade garments shop in Shahi Bazar and was a respectable and law abiding citizen without any political affiliation.

He alleged that his father was killed in Rangers' firing at Azeem Plaza on Memon Road when Rangers after surrounding the entire area of New Cloth Market, Khata Chowk, Chetal Gharhi and Peshawari Mohalla resorted to indiscriminate firing.

He said that his father died on way to hospital. He said, his father was 55-years old and not a terrorist.