Daily Times

KARACHI: Blast with an improvised explosive device to create fear for extortion which took place today has taken the situation as it was three years ago in the in City when a shopkeeper was wounded in a hand grenade attack at an electronic shop in Orangi Town neighborhood on Tuesday afternoon.

Police officials and witnesses have informed that at least two armed men riding a motorcycle attacked Nadeem electronic shop located near Metro Cinema in Orangi, injuring a neighboring shopkeeper, namely Arsalan. The injured was moved to Abbasi Shaheed Hospital for medical treatment. Extra contingent of police and Rangers immediately reached the site and collected the evidences. The electronic shop under attack was also partially damaged in the attack while the shop owner remained safe in the attack. “Thanks God, the attack occurred seconds after we went inside the shop for lunch,” said a shopkeeper Abdullah. The police officials said that the initial investigation suggest that the incident apparently occurred over refusal to pay the extortion money while further investigation was underway. IGP Sindh Allah Dino Khowaja also took the notice of the incident and asked District West SSP to inquire about the incident and arrest the culprits.

Karachi has witnessed a number of such attacks in the past since police and Rangers are aslo busy in conducting Karachi operation against the criminal mafias in a city but about a dozen hand grenade attacks have so far taken place in a city, particularly in Lyari neighbourhood in the last couple of months, witnessing the existence of criminal elements in a metropolis.

Though initial investigations had revealed that the armed motorcyclists had thrown a hand grenade at a shop in Orangi Town, however, the bomb disposal squad’s experts examined the blast site in their initial report stated that it was not a hand grenade but it was an improvised explosive device attached with a timer device weighted around 500 grammes and was planted outside the shop. The shop owner was being demanded of Rs5 million as extortion money. This was the second consecutive attack at a shop as earlier armed men had attacked a same shop on 1st January 2017 in which at least four people were wounded.