Man awarded death sentence for 2019 killing of anchorperson Mureed Abbas in Karachi

KARACHI: A sessions court on Thursday sentenced a man to death on two counts in a case pertaining to the 2019 murder of TV anchor Mureed Abbas and his friend.

Prime suspect Atif Zaman and his brother, Adil Zaman, were arrested and booked by the police for killing Abbas and Khizer Hayat, who were their business partners, in Karachi’s Khayaban-i-Bukhari area on the night of July 9, 2019, exactly seven years ago.

Daniyal Muhammad Hussain, who was part of the legal team that represented Abbas’s wife, said that Adil had been declared an absconder in the case after escaping following the cancellation of his bail by the Supreme Court’s Karachi registry.

Abbas was a Bol News anchorperson. In the incident — which at the time was said to be a “personal dispute” — he was gunned down while Hayat also received two bullet wounds.

Hayat was shifted to a private hospital but he succumbed to his wounds, according to the police.

In October 2019, the case was transferred from an anti-terrorism court to a sessions court, with the former ruling that the offence did not fell within its ambit.