"This is the second and last part of the serial killing story".

GUJRAT, Feb 12: They said the first letter received by Aish was from a student of the seminary, who did not disclose his identity. The letter writer stated that his mother had admitted him and his sister to Qari Saleemullah Yasin's seminary. He alleged that the Qari, tutor Mufti Arshad, Zafar and a proclaimed offender, Haq Nawaz, who was a frequent visitor to the seminary, assaulted his sister for a month.

He said on returning home during vacation his sister tried to commit suicide, but was rescued by mother. As she revealed the story to the mother, he said, he heard it all and wanted to murder the Qari and Mufti, but his mother forbade him from doing so for honour.

The letter writer alleged that the Qari, his brother-in-law Bilal and the Mufti had murdered a student of the daras, but they claimed that the boy was killed when he was hit by a brick on his head while passing through an under-construction house.

He alleged that the three men were assaulting a girl student when the boy saw them and stopped them from doing so. At this, he said, the Qari also invited the boy to join them, but the latter threatened them that he would divulge the secret. Then, they allegedly murdered him, the sources quoted the boy as saying in the letter.

He further alleged in the letter that Bilal forcibly sodomized Asim, who threatened to complain to the Qari against him. Instead of taking action against him, the Qari and Mufti also sodomized him when Arsalan also reached there and raised an alarm. The three men took him outside the seminary at gunpoint.

The boy alleged that the three men had been plundering money they collected in the name of jehad, and they had spared none of the female students coming over there, the sources said.

The receiver of the letter sent a photocopy to the Lalamusa Saddar police with a request to probe the matter and interrogate the nominees of the letter, added.

Meanwhile, they said, another anonymous letter with detailed information was received by the wing commander. They quoted the unknown writer as saying that as a base commander he was responsible to direct police to interrogate the nominees in the double murder case.

He said the police should interrogate Qari Saleem, who wanted to marry a student, but the latter turned down his proposal and left the place. The Qari allegedly raped a student and when she became pregnant, he allegedly murdered her and claimed that she had died of heart attack, according to the second letter.

A few months ago, he murdered a student and aired that he had died due to head injury inflicted on him after a brick hit him. The day Asim and Arsalan were found murdered from Lalamusa, Qari Saleem, Mufti Arshad, Khaleel, Dr Shafique and some tutors of the seminary heard the news after which they met and resolved not to let the cat out of bag.

Mufti Arshad, a resident of Chak 327, was terminated from the seminary of Qari Saleem when he was found involved in raping a girl. Later, he had to quit another institute at Chak 327 on the charges of similar nature. Nowadays he was running his own seminary, the sources quoted the letter writer, who did not disclose the whereabouts of the institute, as saying.

He said Bilal had undergone jail term, as two or three cases of illicit weapons were registered against him at a police station in Samundari. One Amir Dogar, whose father Bashir Ahmad Dogar runs a shop at Rafique Chowk, also assaulted the girls of the seminary. Whenever they committed crime they took refuge at the outhouse of Khaleel Arthi, whose outhouse was situated at a Shorkot village.

The writer named Muhammad Zafar as an activist of an outlawed religious organization. He had participated in jehad of Afghanistan where he was beaten up several times for committing sodomy, the letter added.

The writer alleged in the letter that Zafar had constructed a new house, purchased a tractor and a motorcycle from funds. About Dr Shafique, the writer said, he ran a clinic. A frequent visitor to Afghanistan from where he had got training, he had been collecting money in the name of jehad for two banned religious organizations.

Besides, he had been secretly collecting stuffs of sacrificial animals for the last three years and sold them to a trader in Toba Tek Singh against a handsome amount which he had been equally distributing among Zafar and Mufti Arshad. The main sitting place of Mufti and Zafar is Dr Shafique's clinic.

"The three men assault students of the seminary and the doctor terminates the pregnancy if required," read the letter, whose writer termed it a big organized gang, the sources said.

They said the wing commander sent a copy to the Saddar police station and the victims' fathers gave a written application to the investigators in which they nominated Qari Saleem, Hafiz Aslam and Maulvi Anwar as their accused.

Earlier, one of the investigators, SI Mirza Ashraf, visited the seminary and interrogated some of the students and suspects, including Shafique, Ashfaq, Nadeem Iftikhar and Shakeel, in Lalamusa. However, he could not reach any conclusion in the file he submitted on June 5, 2003, they said.

He also interrogated Ghulam Haider, who is a cousin of PAF employee Afzal and lives at Gakhra village of Kunjah. He wrote in his investigation that there was a need for confirmation that either the two slain had visited him or not.

The Qari informed the investigator that the two boys had been attending his institute for the last one year and they had learnt seven paras each of the Holy Quran. When Aish and the PAF wing commander sent copies of the anonymous letters to police and the two fathers also nominated the Qari in a written application, the investigators again visited Shorkot to interrogate him. Four inspectors investigating the case visited the daras on July 7 last.

The Qari told them that around 300 children came to him for lessons at the seminary. He said Aish's son Asim remained absent for one week few days before his kidnapping and they informed his father who, in the meanwhile, caught his son from a nearby cinema while watching a film and was beaten up.

Qari Aslam, a tutor, and other people related to the institute stated that they were ready to prove their innocence. However, the investigators did not interrogate Mufti Arshad, Bilal, Amir Dogar, Arthi Khaleel, Zafar and Dr Shafique, who were named in the letters, the sources said.

They claimed Lalamusa Saddar police SHO Chaudhry Akhtar wanted to arrest all the nominated men for interrogation and physical remand, but he was not permitted by the higher-ups for the reasons best known to them.

The investigation wing officials, they alleged, after a few weeks they got themselves posted to other police stations. The inquiry was finally closed in August.

SP Javed Iqbal Shami, the wing head, told Dawn that investigators made every possible attempt to find a clue to the serial killer, but failed. He denied having knowledge of the two anonymous letters.