KARACHI: Nearly two months after the deadly blast at the shrine of Sufi saint Hazrat Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, the Counter-Terrorism Department of police on Friday claimed to have made headway in its investigation by spotting two more suspects related to the attack.

To review the progress of the suicide blast case, the director general of Pakistan Rangers, Sindh, chaired a joint meeting of the law-enforcement agencies which chalked out a strategy to bring the findings before the public. The meeting, which was held at the Rangers’ headquarters, also reviewed the overall security situation.

Sharing details of the ‘important progress’ in the investigation, additional inspector general of police Dr Sanaullah Abbasi, who heads the CTD in Sindh, told the media at his office that two facilitators of the suicide bombing had visited the Qalandar’s shrine in Sehwan just a day before the blast and took several photographs of the place.

The CTD chief said the two facilitators of the suicide bombing, which claimed the life of around 80 devotees on Feb 16, had finally been spotted in footage obtained with the help of 38 cameras installed at the shrine. The suspected suicide bomber and the two facilitators could be seen conducting reconnaissance during their one-hour stay at the shrine on Feb 15, the additional IG said.

The facilitators also took several photos of the suspected bomber, perhaps in an attempt to hide their intention to photograph different portions of the shrine, the officer said. However, their activity indicated that all the three suspects who had entered the shrine separately knew each other or were linked, it emerged during the investigation.

Sharing contents of the videos, the CTD chief said one of the facilitators was seen wearing blue shalwar kameez while the other facilitator was clad in black shalwar kameez. The purported suicide bomber was also wearing blue-coloured clothes, he added.

Prior to carrying out suicide bombing, the bomber tried to enter the premises of the Sufi shrine through two other doors but he could not succeed.

Dr Abbasi claimed that the CTD, the Rangers, intelligence agencies and local police of Dadu and Sehwan had collected all forensic evidence and the obtained videos were shared with the Rangers and all other agencies for identification of the suspects. Their pictures had also been sent to the National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra) for the same purpose but their response was awaited, he added.

“Now we are sharing these pictures with the people in order to expedite the process of identification of the culprits,” the CTD chief disclosed.

Rs5m reward

Sharing the contact numbers of CTD police (99203438) and Rangers (1101), the officer announced a reward of Rs5 million for those providing information leading to the identification of the suicide bomber and his facilitators.

In reply to a question, Dr Abbasi who was accompanied by DIG CTD Amir Farooqi and CTD’s SSPs Omer Shahid Hamid and Munir Ahmed Shaikh, said that the so-called Islamic State did not exist in the province as an organisation though some militant and sectarian outfits inspired by it were carrying out acts of terrorism with the help and support of the banned Lashkar-i-Jhangvi or Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan.

DIG CTD Amir Farooqi said they were facing difficulties in getting the suspected bomber and his facilitators identified, because Nadra did not have proper facial recognition system. He told Dawn that they had tried to retrieve ‘crucial data’ from the total 38 cameras installed at the mausoleum despite often being criticised over ‘weak resources’ at their disposal.

He claimed that the progress in the case was ‘substantive’ because the two facilitators spotted in footage appeared to be ‘locals.’

This was the first time during the investigation of the case that the photos of the suicide bomber and his facilitators were being shared with the public at official level to seek their help for identification purpose, said Dr Abbasi.

Published in Dawn, April 8th, 2017