Karachi: Khurram Zaki, a leading Pakistani rights activist known for his strong stance against hatred and violence targeted at Shia Muslims, has been killed by unidentified assailants here in an apparent sectarian attack.
Zaki, 40, was killed last night by four armed assailants who came on two motorcycles and sprayed bullets while he was having dinner at a restaurant in Sector 11 of New Karachi.
Rao Khalid, a journalist who was with Zaki and a bystander were critically wounded in the attack. Zaki, a former journalist and a social media campaigner, gained fame when he launched a Facebook page Let Us Build Pakistan (LUBP) and became editor of a website devoted to working for human rights and spreading liberal religious views.
The spokesman for a splinter group of the Pakistani Taliban has said they were behind the shooting, BBC reported. He said they killed him because of his recent campaign against a cleric of the Red Mosque in Islamabad.
Mr Zaki and other campaigners had filed a court case charging Abdul Aziz with incitement to hatred and violence against the Shia minority. The case was brought in response to the cleric's refusal to condemn attacks such as that on a school in Peshawar in 2014 in which 152 people, most of them schoolchildren, were killed.
