Pakistan: Human rights activist Khurram Zaki shot dead in Karachi

Popular Pakistani human rights activist and social media campaigner Khurram Zaki was reportedly shot dead by unknown miscreants in Karachi on 7 May.

Central District SSP, Muqadas Haider, said that four suspects riding on two motorcycles opened fire on Zaki while he was eating dinner at a restaurant in Sector-11B of North Karachi.

The activist was killed, while two others journalist Rao Khalid and bystander Aslam were critically wounded in the attack, reports Dawn.

Zaki was an active campaigner for human rights and was the editor of the website and Facebook page Let Us Build Pakistan (LUBP) which claimed to 'spread liberal religious views and condemned extremism in all forms'.

Zaki was the former head of current affairs for TV Channel News One, where he looked after Infotainment and religious programming. Zaki was last in limelight alongside activist Jibran Nasir in a campaign against Lal Masjid cleric Maulana Abdul Aziz for inciting hatred against Shia Muslims.

The campaigners had managed to get a case registered against Aziz. Zaki was 'detained' during the campaign against Lal Masjid -Khurram Zaki's Facebook page.

He had complained that Maulana Aziz and Jamia Hafsa-Lal Masjid released a video message in which the cleric attempted to incite sectarian hatred and violence against Shia Muslims by blaming them for leading the civil society campaign against him and Lal Masjid-Jamia Hafsa.

The activist's complaint further stated that such allegations were obvious and deliberate attempts from Aziz' side to malign and divide the national institution on sectarian lines, by fomenting sectarian hatred among the rank and file of the intelligence agency.

He went on to say that such attempts to scandalise ISI falls out of the fair perimetres of genuine academic criticism of the wrongdoings of any state institution as no evidence was put forward to support his allegations.

Rights activist Sabeen Mahmud, who was also gunned down in Karachi, had taken part in the protest against Lal Masjid as well.

--ANI