KARACHI: A senior medico-legal officer of the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre was killed with his driver in a targeted attack on Tuesday on Chaudhry Khaliq-uz-Zaman Road, near the place where a powerful rickshaw-planted bomb had exploded recently, according to officials.

Dr Manzoor Memon, 45, left the JPMC in a chauffeur-driven car after performing his duty when two gunmen riding two motorcycles and wearing helmets attacked them near Askari-I apartments at around 4pm, said Karachi-South SSP Faisal Bashir Memon.

He added that the armed men attacked them from both sides of the car that hit another vehicle and halted near the Delhi Colony traffic intersection.

The police said that the victims sustained multiple bullet wounds and died before any medical aid could be provided to them. The doctor was on his way to his home in Badar Commercial, Phase-V, Defence Housing Authority.

The bodies were shifted to the same hospital for autopsy where the doctor worked. The MLO sustained three gunshot wounds in the neck and face while his driver, Ashiq Karim, 40, sustained five bullet wounds in his face and chest, said police surgeon Dr Jalil Qadir.

Moving scenes were witnessed at the JPMC emergency. Several MLOs of different hospitals, health minister Dr Saghir Ahmed and special secretary health, Dr Suresh Kumar and others visited the place.

A hospital official quoted a teenager daughter of Dr Memon as telling the minister that her father had received a threat but no security had been provided to him. The late senior MLO had been working at the JPMC for the past four years. Previously, he was posted in the District Malir Jail. In the evening, he did private practice as a general practitioner in Keamari.

“The MLO had not received any specific threat, but recently he had reported that some people in a car had staked out his residence in Badar Commercial,” said the police surgeon.

This matter had also been reported to the Darakhshan police station.

The SSP-South admitted that the MLO had reported the incident to the police on April 1. The officer quoted the MLO as saying that three men had come to his apartment in a car and left after observing it. He had sought police deployment there, and later a police van frequently visited the place.

The MLO’s report to the police did not mention any specific threat, the officer said, adding that instead he had suspected a mugging attempt.

“It is a targeted killing case,” said the senior police officer. The investigators were examining the doctor’s medico-legal reports issued during the past two/three months to find any clue to the motive for the attack.

Dr Manzoor Memon, father of three, originally hailed from Thatta district.

A hospital official request anonymity told Dawn that the doctor’s driver had noticed a month ago that a car was parked with the doctor’s car in a way to block it in Badar Commercial. The doctor had suspected that it might construe a threat to him. The official said that the late driver had noticed the registration number of the car. Later, the doctor in his report submitted at the ‘Joint Emergency and Response Centre’ (JERC) manned jointly by the police and Rangers at the Pakistan Medical Association office at Garden had given the number of the car.

However, PMA secretary general Dr Qazi Wasiq told Dawn that he was not aware of any such specific report of the late doctor.

He said around 40 doctors received threats mostly related to extortion activities but the law-enforcement agencies did not take such threats seriously.

He said it was decided in the meeting of doctors and LEAs officials that ‘satelite units’ of the JERC would be set up at hospitals and motorbike squads would be established to provide security to doctors on emergency basis but so far, it had not been done.

Dr Wasiq said that the PMA would hold a meeting on Saturday to launch a ‘mass awareness campaign’ about the threats being faced by the doctors in Karachi.

Published in Dawn, May 14th, 2014.