Murder on Lahore’s Canal Road linked to underworld gang war

LAHORE: The decades-old rivalry between two underworld dons of Lahore — Khwaja Gulshan alias Teefi Butt and the slain Arif Ameer alias Tipu Truckanwala — reportedly took another ugly turn on Monday when Butt’s brother-in-law was shot dead while his sister was critically injured by the sharpshooters near the FC College Underpass on the Canal Road.

The attack on the family members of Teefi Butt is being seen as a sign of looming threats of a gang war in the provincial capital. It was the third murder in connection with the old rivalry between the Teefi Butt and Tipu Truckanwala gangs during the last few months.

Talking about the Monday’s incident, an official said the unidentified armed men ambushed the SUV of Butt’s brother-in-law, Javed Butt, who was himself driving the vehicle. He said Javed and his wife were attacked when they were going to pick their kids from a school in Ichhra.

Quoting initial inquiries, the police official said the armed motorcyclists intercepted the vehicle of Javed Butt after a recce. As the vehicle slowed down at the traffic congestion on Canal Road near the FC College Underpass, the shooters who were chasing the couple sprayed them with a volley of bullets.

Teefi’s brother-in-law killed, sister injured by sharpshooters

The video footage of the incident showed Javed Butt in a pool of blood ‘dead on the spot’ while his wife was injured critically. She was shifted to a local hospital by police who reached the site on being alerted about the incident.

The daylight-armed attack and sounds of heavy gunfire created a panic among the road users, forcing some of them to abandon their vehicles on the road and rush for shelter.

The sources in the Lahore police believe that it may be a beginning of the new gang war between Teefi and Tipu gangs. They said both the families first clashed again when young Ameer Balaj, son of the late Tipu Truckanwala, was gunned down in a wedding ceremony in Chuhng area in January this year. Tipu’s family nominated Teefi, his cousin Khawaja Aqeel alias Gogi Butt and others in the case. Soon after the incident, Teefi Butt fled to the UK while Gogi Butt’s last location was reported to be in Karachi where he had gone underground.

During the course of investigation, police arrested Ameer Balaj’s close friend, Ahsan Shah, for giving secret information to Teefi Butt and his gangsters about the movement of his friend.

The sources said Ahsan Shah was allegedly murdered in an ‘encounter’ between the police team of the Organised Crime Unit (OCU), formerly the CIA, and the unidentified armed men a week back. The OCU claimed that Shah had planned to murder of OCU Sub-Inspector Shakeel Butt in jail and made public his mobile phone call he made from the jail.

The sources said the murder of Shah in connection with the killing of Balaj threw the shadows of doubts on the mysterious role of some OCU police officials as the gangsters of the underworld believed that Shah was allegedly murdered in a ‘staged encounter’. The mystery surrounding the killing of Shah further deepened when conflicting reports regarding the beneficiary of his murder surfaced. Some reports suggested that the killing of the informer (Shah) would favour Teefi Butt, the prime suspect nominated in the Balaj’s murder case, who had hired Shah to get information of Balaj’s movement. However, the sources added, the murder of Teefi’s brother-in-law near the Canal Road baffled the police high-ups who had yet no clue about the network behind this assassination.

The OCU is also investigating the role of Balaj’s family or his younger brother Ameer Mussab in the murder of Javed Butt.

The sources claimed that Mussab was the complainant in the murder case of his brother Ameer Balaj and he had nominated Teefi and Gogi Butt in the FIR. Monday’s killing may take Balaj’s relatives to a defensive position if a case would be lodged against them.

Lahore OCU DIG Imran Kishwar told Dawn the murder of Javed Butt put the police in a challenging situation as they were immediately unable to name anyone behind the killing. He said that the police teams were trying to get help from the Punjab Safe City Authority cameras to trace the alleged killers. To a question, he said that the OCU teams were exploring all other options as they feared that any ‘third party’ might have settled its score with Javed Butt by taking advantage of old rivalry between the Butt and Balaj families.

Published in Dawn, September 3rd, 2024