KARACHI: Police’s Counter-Terrorism Department on Thursday claimed to have arrested four suspects linked with the banned Sindh Revolution Army (SRA) allegedly involved in recent grenade and cracker attacks on Rangers’ mobiles and checkpoints in Karachi and Ghotki.

CTD DIG Omar Shahid Hamid said that the police along with a federal intelligence agency arrested the suspects identified as Sarang, alias Sohail; Bashir Ahmed; Anis Ahmed and Khawand Bux and recovered hand grenades and pistols from them.

Speaking at a press conference at his office, the senior officer added that the held suspects were involved in explosions in Karachi’s Gulistan-i-Jauhar, Sachal and Liaquatabad areas as well as other parts of Sindh.

During the initial interrogation, they revealed that they carried out the grenade attacks on Rangers’ mobiles at Kamran Chowrangi in Gulistan-i-Jauhar on June 10 and the Manzil petrol pump in Malir, respectively, on the same day, in which two passers-by were hurt.

They were also involved in a grenade attack on two mobile vans of the paramilitary force during the cash distribution work being carried out under the Ehsaas programme at Liaquatabad on June 19 in which one person was killed while seven others were injured.

The suspects carried out a grenade attack on a bakery in Bilawal Shah Noorani Goth, in which its owner, a former Rangers inspector, Ashiq Ali, was killed.

On the same day, the held suspects’ accomplices attacked a Rangers mobile with a grenade in Ghotki district.

“The held suspects revealed that their organisation, SRA, was being funded by the Indian agency, RAW,” said the CTD chief.

They also told the investigators that SRA ‘commander’ was Syed Asghar Ali Shah, alias Sajjad Shah, whose two brothers — Pariyal Shah and Zamin Shah — had been killed during a police encounter at Safari Park in Karachi around seven years ago in which DSP Sharea Faisal Qasim Ghouri was martyred while Inspector Haider Ali and Inspector Malik Saleem and other policemen were wounded.

Published in Dawn, November 20th, 2020