Mystery surrounded death of five men, two of them belonging to the military, whose bodies were found with bullet wounds near a famous shrine in Pakistan's Sindh province, police said.
The bodies were found near Noori Jam Tamashi shrine at Kinjhar lake in Thatta, some 100 km from Karachi, yesterday evening and removed to the civil hospital late that night.
Two of the deceased have been identified as Bilal Ayub Khan from Chaklala, Rawalpindi and Jehangir Akhtar, a resident of Gilgit are said to be from the military. The rest three are said to belong to Karachi.
SSP Thatta, Haseeb Afzal however said the police had been unable to find out the motive of the killings or as to how they took place.
"We are carrying out our investigations but we are getting conflicting facts. Apparently these five persons came in a car from Karachi to Kinjhar Lake, where they hired a boat to take them to the shrine and graveyard located in the middle of the lake," he said.
"According to the boat operator, they told him to pick them up after two hours and when he returned to the shrine and graveyard, he found their bodies with bullet shots to their heads," Afzal said.
Police officials believe that around seven tourists had arrived at the lake but have no clue where the other two persons disappeared and the detained boat operator also did not confirming this.
The graveyard near the shrine named after a famous folk romance of Sindhi culture, which is part of Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai's poetry, is visited by a large number of people who come to the Lake.
Kinjhar Lake is a well-known tourist resort and picnic spot near Thatta, which is some 100 kilometres from Karachi.
"But the tourists mostly come in summer in large numbers," a local resident said.
The police are said to be verifying the statement of boat operator Gul Muhammad, who is in their custody.
