ISLAMABAD    -  Senior journalist Arshad Sharif who was shot and killed amid mysterious cir­cumstances in Kenya on Sunday last week was laid to rest at the H-11 graveyard af­ter his funeral prayers were offered at the Shah Faisal Mosque here on Thursday. 

A large number of peo­ple belonging to various walks of life attended the funeral prayers. Strict secu­rity arrangements were made around the Mosque to avoid any untoward incident dur­ing the last rituals of the slain journalist. A large contingent of police was deployed at the graveyard where journalists and members of the civil soci­ety reached in huge numbers. During Sharif’s burial, slogans of “Allahu Akbar” were chant­ed. Afterwards, personnel of the Pakistan Army paid trib­ute to the journalist and a gar­land from Chief of Army Staff Qamar Javed Bajwa was laid at his grave. Earlier, a large number of journalists, politi­cians and civil society mem­bers including Azam Swati, Shibli Faraz, Murad Saeed, Faisal Karim Kundi, Kashif Abbasi, Waseem Badami and Sami Ibrahim attended the funeral prayers. According to rough estimates, around 40,000 people attended the funeral while thousands oth­ers gathered outside the Fais­al Mosque. Supporters of the PTI made up a large propor­tion of the crowd, waving flags and shouting “Arshad, your blood will bring revolution.” After prayers, coffin bearers struggled to push through the crowd to a waiting am­bulance for onward passage to the graveyard. Sharif was shot dead in Kenya allegedly by the local police on Sunday night, with an official police statement saying an investi­gation was underway. Sharif’s body arrived in Pakistan on Wednesday. A post-mortem was later conducted at the Pakistan Institute of Medi­cal Sciences in Islamabad. At his family’s request, an eight-member medical board of the PIMS hospital carried out the postmortem on his body at the hospital. The 49-year-old journalist had fled the country in August to avoid arrest after he was slapped with multiple cases, includ­ing sedition charges over an interview with PTI leader Shahbaz Gill during which the latter had made controversial comments. The death of the journalist sent shock waves across rights organisations, the media fraternity and civil society and prompted calls for thorough investigation and disclosure of facts