As Karachi remains mired in the daunting challenge of street crime, a Pakistani-Canadian was shot dead by muggers for resisting a robbery bid in the Nazimabad area of the port city.
As per details, the victim, identified as Amin Alvi, was out shopping with four street children when the robbers near Board Office encountered him.
Police said that the Pakistani-Canadian citizen had visited a bank and a money exchanger before taking the children shopping.
As narrated by one of the children accompanying Alvi, two armed men arrived on a motorcycle, and one of them got off the two-wheeler.
He approached the car and asked the victim to hand over his cash and other valuables, the child told the police.
He said that Alvi had agreed to do as the mugger said but pushed him back as soon as he slid his hand into the victim’s pocket.
This motivated the mugger to pull the trigger and shoot Alvi before fleeing with his accomplice, the child added.
He said that none of the drivers who had stopped by helped Alvi, who lay on the road for several minutes.
However, a rickshaw driver eventually took him to the hospital, where he died during treatment, the child concluded.
Police said Alvi had retired from a foreign airline five years ago and visited Karachi twice or thrice a year.
They said that his funeral prayers would be offered after his family reaches Karachi. No case was registered to probe the case until the filing of this report.
Separately, a trader of potatoes and onions was killed by unidentified robbers in the Orangi Town locality over resisting an attempt to mug him. Naseem, 45, was a father of six daughters. His family has demanded that the police arrest the killers immediately.
The family said Naseem was a big businessman. They said that he had left home early in the morning to go to the vegetable market when he was attacked by robbers.
Police said that according to the eyewitnesses, the suspects were already waiting on the road, adding that they killed the victim when he approached in his car with his driver and workers.
Officials said they were trying to get the CCTV camera footage of the incident. According to them, the killers had made off with more than Rs100,000.
Police have failed to control street crime in Karachi, as the number of deaths due to firing during robberies in the city this year has reached 70 in almost six months.
