MUMUTAZ MURDER – 1994

The peaceful calm of an Orkney summer’s evening was shattered when, in a single act of horror, a man was gunned down in full view of a room full of diners, including families with children, at Kirkwall’s Mumutaz Indian restaurant.

Orkney’s first murder investigation in a quarter of a century began when restaurant manager Shamsudden Mahmood (26) was shot and fatally wounded by an unknown assailant on the evening of Thursday, June 2, 1994.

Diners watched in horror as the masked and hooded man entered the restaurant in Kirkwall’s Bridge Street and shot Mr Mahmood in the face. The killer then made his escape down a nearby lane. Police mounted a cordon at the airport and ferry terminals with hundreds of people questioned. Armed police were on stand-by if need, said Orkney’s senior police officer Chief Inspector Angus MacLeod.

As extra police were drafted in from Inverness, Detective Superintendent George Gough, who led the inquiry, said: “There is no obvious motive for the killing.” He repeatedly said that he could not rule out the possibility that the killer was still in Orkney.

The mystery was no clearer nearly three years later when an Orkney policeman – whose son was named in court as a suspect – was jailed on a charge of concealing evidence in the case. He was freed, after his sentence, still protesting his – and his son’s – innocence.

The result was that more than five years after the murder – despite the issuing of a computerised photo-fit picture of a suspect a national operation that included nation-wide television appeals – the killer was still at large.