Omer Shahid Hamid

Omer (Omar) Shahid Hamid[1] (born October 23, 1977) is a Pakistani writer, a serving police officer of the Police Service of Pakistan, and son of the assassinated Malik Shahid Hamid , Managing Director of the Karachi Electric Supply Corporation (KESC).

Career

After successfully passing the CSS Examinations, Omar joined the Police Force in 2003 as an ASP. His first appointment was in Police Headquarters, Garden, Karachi. He has served in Karachi's dangerous Lyari district during the gang wars, and has also served in Pakistan's Intelligence Bureau and in the Sindh Police's Counter terrorism Department.

Personal life

Omer Shahid Hamid is the son of the late Shahid Hamid , a bureaucrat and managing director of KESC (now K-Electric), who was murdered along with his driver Ashraf Brohi and guard Khan Akbar, in the neighborhood of Defence Housing Authority, Karachi on 5th July 1997. Saulat Mirza, the accused in the case, was convicted and sentenced to death by the court, and was hanged in Machh jail on 12 May 2015.[2] Omer is married and a father of one son.

Death Threat

Omer Hamid has served as a police officer for 17 years. In 2011, while he was serving as head of Karachi's counter terrorism cell, he was placed on a Taliban hit list. He subsequently took a leave of absence from the police for five years. In 2016, Omar returned to Karachi and rejoined the counter terrorism department of the Sindh police as a Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP).

Writer

While on sabbatical, Omer wrote a novel, The Prisoner (2013),[3] inspired by his experiences in the police. the book became a bestseller in both India and Pakistan. His second novel, The Spinner's Tale, was published in 2015 by Pan Macmillan India, and was loosely based on events and characters involved in the kidnapping of the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was murdered in Karachi in 2002.[4] The Spinner's Tale won the Karachi Literature Festival's fiction prize in 2017, and also won the Italy Reads Pakistan prize in the same year. Omar released his third book, The Party Worker, in January 2017.

References
  1. Omer Shahid Hamid
  2. Express Tribune
  3. npr Books
  4. The Wall Street Journal; July 7, 2015. Q&A: Omar Shahid Hamid, Pakistani Policeman Turned Novelist, by Syed Shoaib Hasan. Retrieved May 15, 2016.


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