Unidentified gunmen yesterday shot dead a Supreme Court official, regarded as a key witness by the legal team representing Pakistan’s suspended chief justice in his fight against a move by President Pervez Musharraf to sack him.Syed Hammad Raza, an additional registrar of the top court, was shot at point-blank range by two or three gunmen just before dawn at his home in the capital, Islamabad, police and relatives said. “He was an important person in our case,” Munir Ahmed Malik, a lawyer on suspended Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry’s legal team, said.
Chaudhry has been at the center of a judicial and political crisis since Musharraf moved to sack him two months ago over undisclosed allegations of misconduct. Acting Chief Justice Rana Bhagwandas and Chaudhry separately visited RazaÂ’s family and expressed their condolences.
Raza was stationed in the southwestern province of Balochistan, where Chaudhry was raised and served as a judge, before being reassigned to the Supreme Court. “You called him to Islamabad. You should have protected him, and now my children need protection as well,” Shadana, Raza’s grief-stricken widow, told Chaudhry. Shadana said that she was convinced it was a targeted killing as there was no attempt at robbery. “They just came and shot him. He opened the door and they shot him and ran away.”