Babar had returned from court on Thursday afternoon when two unknown men knocked at the gate of his residence in the congested Hawal locality of downtown Srinagar, and sought to meet him. The men were asked to wait on a swing chair in the compound, said Rashid Maqbool, a neighbour.
“When he walked out of the house, the assassins shot him from barely two-metre distance. A bullet hit his skull and it proved lethal,” a senior police officer, who visited the scene of crime, told The Quint.
Babar, before his killing, had flagged concerns. Kashmir IG Vijay Kumar said he was asked by his brother-in-law, a middle rung officer in J&K Police, to “leave home for few days.”
His eldest brother, Zaffar Qadri, also a lawyer, who was inside the house, rushed out but the assassins had managed to escape. “He somehow limped his way back into the home but collapsed at the main door,” Zaffar said. Their third brother is in New Delhi. He couldn’t attend the last rites.
“He had two injury marks; one on his head and another in his arm,” a doctor at Sher-e-Kashmir Institute of Medical Science said.
Haseeb Mughal, senior superintendent of Srinagar police, told media that a case has been filed.
“We have filed an FIR under relevant sections of IPC and investigations are underway,” said SSP Mughal.
IG Kumar has also said a special team has been constituted to probe the assassination.