RAHIM YAR KHAN/CHINIOT: Armed assailants shot dead a man belonging to the Ahmadi community on Zahirpir-Khanpur Road about 56 kilometres from here on Wednesday night.

Reports suggested Basharat Ahmad, 59, a resident of Khanpur’s Green Town area, was on his way home by motorcycle when assailants fired at him near a filling station. Thought to be an accident, his family took the body home where they noticed a bullet mark on his head.

The DPO’s spokesperson told Dawn that Basharat Ahmad had been targeted and the assailants fled without touching his mobile phone and Rs15,000.

The Khanpur Saddar police registered a case under Section 302 of PPC.

Information gleaned by Chiniot correspondent said Basharat Ahmad was going back home from his petrol station on Zahir Pir Road (which connects the city to main Pakistan Highway) when armed men shot at him from point blank range and he died on the spot.

Jamaat-i-Ahmadiyya Pakistan spokesperson Saleemuddin condemned the attack and said this was the third incident in the last one month or so in which an Ahmadi community member had been slain. Advocate Malik Saleem Latif was killed in Nankana Sahib and Dr Ashfaq Ahmad in Lahore, he said.

Saleemuddin protested propagation of hate material against the community was going on unchecked and this was one of the main reasons for such attacks. He lamented that not much seemed to have been done to check the practice under the NAP and demanded that the perpetrators be arrested without delay.