ISLAMABAD: Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan said on Wednesday that the federal government would not deploy paramilitary forces in Karachi without legal cover.

On the eve of the expiry of the order whereby Rangers were deputed to enforce law and order in Karachi, the minister told reporters that the paramilitary force would be pulled out from the city 24 hours after the expiration of their term of deployment.

However, speaking hours before the request for an extension was issued by the Sindh government, he expressed the confidence that the provincial government would request such an extension of their stay in the city, given that Rangers were performing key tasks, such as providing security at prisons in Sindh. The army was also deployed in certain areas of the province, he said, hinting that the federal forces might be withdrawn if no requisition was received from the provincial government.

Under normal circumstances, a request for extension in Rangers’ term of deployment should have been received days ago, but was still awaited on Wednesday night, hours before their term was set to expire. A letter from the Sindh chief minister to the Rangers director general -- accusing the force of acting beyond its mandate, a copy of which was also sent to the Interior Ministry -- was reportedly behind the confusion around the renewal of the Rangers’ deployment in Karachi.

However, Mr Khan told mediapersons that he had spoken to Sindh Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah and assured him that their reservations would be addressed.

The interior minister said he was wary of attempts to create an impression that Rangers’ deployment in the city was either unwelcome or not in accordance with the law, saying that such statements were not only surprising, but deplorable.

He praised the Rangers’ remarkable role in helping bring peace to Karachi, saying that their presence had given confidence to the people and businessmen of the city.

“They have targeted extortionists, target-killers, murderers and terrorists. This is not a political force targeting some specific political party on the directions of another political party. It is purely an apolitical force,” he remarked.

In a bid to assuage the concerns of the PPP government in Sindh, he said, “Nobody is targeting the provincial government. The Rangers are working within their mandate and any misunderstandings about their mandate can be removed.”

He also explained that the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) had been given powers to detain suspects for 90 days in transnational and inter-provincial crimes that were beyond the purview of local police. He said the objective was not to encroach on the domain of the provincial governments or the police and pointed out that the Joint Investigation Team probing the Dr Imran Farooq murder case was headed by an FIA officer and asserted that this was not possible without giving them these powers.

The minister said the interrogation of Moazzam Ali -- who was accused of arranging visas and air tickets for the two men suspected of killing Dr Imran Farooq -- had been carried out by the London Metropolitan Police and the Joint Investigation Team on Monday and Tuesday.

He said the team from Met Police would be given access to one of the two other accused men, while a decision on the third one would be taken after Eid. He said the investigation was progressing satisfactorily and regretted speculations around the investigations, saying that the government had received a complaint from the United Kingdom regarding media reports in Pakistan about the case.

To a question, he said so far no request had been received for extradition of the accused in the Dr Imran Farooq murder case and noted that this could only be done after investigations were completed.

He also revealed that the Ministry of Interior had been formally assigned the task of registering and regulating the activities of INGOs. He said though the ministry has been given six months to do this, he planned to put a mechanism in place within the next three months.

Under the new regime, an online monitoring and complaint system would be introduced and the mandate, source of funding, area of responsibility and geographic location of NGOs’ operations would be known to all, he said.

Published in Dawn, July 9th, 2015

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