KARACHI: Pakistan Rangers, Sindh, informed the administrative judge of the anti-terrorism courts on Wednesday about the 90-day preventive detention of former chairman of Fishermen Cooperative Society (FCS) Dr Nisar Morai for questioning.

While the administrative judge was informed that Nisar Ahmed Jan Memon, better known as Nisar Morai, had been arrested in Karachi, a Rangers spokesman said in a statement that he was arrested in Islamabad.

Rangers personnel and their legal team produced the former FCS chief in court and informed the judge through an application that they had arrested him within the jurisdiction of Darakhshan police station.

They submitted that they had credible information that the suspect was involved in offences related to target killing, kidnapping and extortion punishable under the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997, and therefore he was placed under three-month preventive detention as provided in Section 11-EEEE of the ATA for an inquiry.

Nisar Morai produced in court

In compliance with Section 11EEEE (3) of the ATA, the detainee was produced along with copies of the notification, detention order and jail warrant for the court’s information.

The Rangers alleged that besides his involvement in other crimes, the suspect was also actively involved in helping and funding the gang warfare in Lyari.

Dr Morai, believed to be an important figure of the Sindh PPP, was appointed chief of the FCS in a controversial manner in January 2014.

He mysteriously disappeared soon after the paramilitary force had arrested FCS vice chairman Sultan Qamar Siddiqui and others in June last year. Later, Siddiqui, along with his brother and an aide, were handed over to police and named in the Safoora Goth bus carnage case for allegedly providing arms to assailants.

The Rangers had also detained for 90 days Saeed Baloch, the general secretary of the Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum and the FCS employees’ union, in January for allegedly funding outlawed People’s Amn Committee leader Uzair Jan Baloch, Lyari gangster Noor Mohammad alias Baba Ladla and the proscribed Balochistan Liberation Army.

The paramilitary force also informed the court about the three-month preventive detention of another suspect on similar grounds for grilling.

The Rangers said that Adnan Elahi alias Adu, said to be a political worker, was arrested in Nazimabad on Tuesday.

The suspect was allegedly involved in two improvised explosive device blasts at Rangers checkpoints in Essa Nagri and Gulshan-i-Iqbal on March 13.

Published in Dawn, March 17th, 2016