KARACHI; A prominent lawyer was gunned down and his son injured in what police suspect was a targeted attack outside a mosque in Karachi’s upscale Defence Housing Authority (DHA) area on Friday afternoon.
According to South DIG Syed Asad Raza, the incident occurred shortly after funeral prayers at a DHA mosque. “As Advocate Khawaja Shamsul Islam and his son exited the mosque, a lone assailant opened fire on them before fleeing the scene,” the DIG told reporters. Both victims were rushed to a private hospital in Clifton, where Islam succumbed to his injuries.
DIG Raza revealed that preliminary investigations suggest a possible motive rooted in past legal disputes. In 2021, a man had filed an FIR at the Boat Basin police station accusing unknown suspects of murdering his father. The complainant later attempted to implicate Advocate Islam, though he failed to present sufficient evidence. As a result, the case was marked “A-Class” (untraced) and closed by the Investigation DSP Clifton, Jahanzaib Khan.
A second incident in 2024 further linked the slain lawyer to a violent confrontation. The same complainant, also a lawyer, filed another FIR alleging that while heading to Isha prayers with Islam in the Zamzama area, they were ambushed by the complainant from the earlier case and up to 20 armed men. The group allegedly attacked them with firearms, iron rods, and batons, injuring Islam.
DIG Raza noted that this case was initially investigated by Inspector Maqbool Meher, and some arrests were made. However, the matter was later transferred to Karachi’s Special Investigation Unit (SIU) and reclassified as an extortion case.
This incident comes just months after a similar tragedy in April, when a civil judge and a lawyer were killed in an armed attack on the motorway in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Nowshera district. According to Nowshera Deputy Commissioner Irfanullah Mehsud, the victims were identified as Mohammad Hayat, a civil judge from Mardan originally hailing from Swat, and Khalid Khan, a lawyer from Rustam, Mardan. Both died on the spot and were shifted to Qazi Hussain Ahmed Medical Complex.
