By Muhammad Najeeb, IANS,
Islamabad : Senior pakistani journalist and television anchor Khalil Malik and his wife were found shot dead in his office-cum-residence Wednesday, police said.
Malik, 61, had worked for several publications and television channels including Pakistan Television and was currently with ATV as news and current affairs director.
“At around 9.30 a.m. his wife Sara came to his office and asked him to come to the adjacent room where they exchanged some hot words… after a while we heard a gunshot,” a worker at Malik’s private office told IANS.
The worker, who did not wish to be named, said he and another employee ran towards that room and as “we knocked at the door, we heard another shot”.
He said he immediately called the police who reached the office-cum-residence within 10 minutes and broke open the door. “Both were found dead,” said the employee.
Police said the bodies were sent to a hospital for autopsy. They said it was yet not clear who killed whom. “But we are sure that one killed the other and then committed suicide,” said the police official who was present on the spot.
According to family sources, the two were living separately for the last many years. Malik used to live at his office-cum-residence while Sara was living with her four children.
The family sources said Sara tried to commit suicide last week by taking sleeping pills but her children shifted her to a hospital in time and she was saved.
One of their family members said a couple of days back Sara was heard asking how to obtain a pistol and probably killed her husband and then committed suicide.
According to another person, Malik last year had a second marriage with a young woman which added to Sara’s anger and she was always seen scolding her husband.
Malik had covered the 1999 talks between the foreign ministers of Pakistan and India over the Kargil issue and the talks in 2000 between President Pervez Musharraf and then prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee in India for the Pakistani media.