Summary of case

On February 12, 2017, unidentified gunmen on a motorcycle fired at the Digital Satellite News Gathering Van (DSNG) of Samaa TV in Karachi, the largest city of Pakistan. A 22-year-old assistant on the DSNG van, Taimoor Abbas, was killed in the incident.

The Samaa TV DSNG van with four staffers had gone to cover an earlier grenade assault on a police vehicle.

Director of News for Samaa, Farhan Malik, told PPF that Abbas was hit on the neck and chest, while an engineer, driver and cameraman remained unharmed.

Abbas was rushed to the nearby Abbasi Shaheed Hospital where he succumbed to his injuries. Malik said that the driver had sped up and rushed from the scene otherwise there would have been even greater losses. He added that the attackers had targeted the Samaa team to prevent them from carrying out their duty but “the channel will be moving ahead with greater determination”.

A First Information Report (FIR) was registered by police against unknown suspects on February 13. Additionally, the then Sindh Inspector General of Police AD Khawaja constituted two committees on the directives of Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah to investigate both the attacks on the DSNG van and a police armoured van in the city.

The banned Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) later claimed responsibility for the attack. In a statement, TTP spokesperson Mohammad Khorasani said that the media was not impartial and that they (TTP) had given several warnings to the media.

Updates

Samaa's bureau chief Faisal Shakeel informed PPF that police has arrested two accused from the TTP who were allegedly involved in the murder. The case remains under trial.