Rights activist Khurram Zaki gunned down in Karachi

KARACHI: Unidentified gunmen shot dead civil society activist and social media campaigner Khurram Zaki and injured two others in North Karachi area of the city late Saturday night.

Zaki and a friend were sitting at an outdoor restaurant in Sector 11-G of North Karachi when attackers on two motorbikes sprayed him with bullets and fled, said SHO Iftekhar of Sir Syed Police Station.

"Zaki was sitting at a cafe where he was targeted by four armed men arriving on two motorcycles," Muqadas Haider, a senior police official said on Sunday.

The two friends along with a passer-by, identified as Aslam, were wounded and taken to the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital. Zaki was later moved to the Aga Khan Hospital, where he succumbed to his injuries.

The deceased suffered multiple bullet wounds to his torso. The attackers used a 9mm pistol, police said, adding that 19 bullet casings had been recovered from the scene of the crime. The spent bullet shells were sent to the forensic division of the Sindh Police.

SHO Iftekhar said Zaki had recently shifted to North Karachi from Gulistan-e-Jauhar. The victim was also a Zakir, who delivered sermons at Majalis.

Syed Khurram Zaki was born on March 26, 1976. He was a research scholar, former journalist, blogger, and human and civil rights activist.

Zaki joined the BTL (Direct Marketing) Division of Interflow Communications as Brand Activation Manager in 2002, then moved to Airwaves Media, and worked for a private TV channel as a director/producer in the current affairs and infotainment department.

He was popular on social media as the editor of the website Let Us Build Pakistan (LUBP), an online forum which claimed to "spread liberal religious views and condemned extremism in all forms".

The Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) condemned the killing, demanding immediate arrest of the murderers.

“Khurram Zaki’s murder is condemnable. Incidents of targeted killing are occurring in spite of on-going operation in the city,” said the MQM’s Coordination Committee in a statement. 

Chairman Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Bilawal Bhutto Zardari also took serious notice of the brutal murder and urged authorities to ferret out the culprits and bring them to book at the earliest.

In a statement by the PPP media cell, the PPP chairman condemned the murder and paid tributes to "the slain civil society activist who always stood against injustices and atrocities against the innocent people in the country". Bilawal expressed sympathy with the family and assured them that the killers would not be spared and they cannot go scot-free under any circumstances, said the statement.