KARACHI, Jan 22: Police who rounded up 79 men in a pre-dawn crackdown on Sohrab Goth last week claiming that they were pro-Taliban militants seem desperate to establish that the detainees have links with any banned religious party.

And yet the police have failed to produce the suspects in court to seek their physical remand for investigation within the stipulated time, raising serious questions over the detention of the suspects and the success of what was described as an anti-Taliban operation.

Following initial interrogations, they have released 14 of the men nabbed in the raid, in which two policemen were killed and six others wounded.

The released men were found to be residents of the area and innocent of the alleged crime.

“Of the 79 men, some 14 persons have been released as they were found innocent with no criminal background and anti-state activity,” said a source close to the investigation’s findings.

“The others are being interrogated on the same lines, but there is hardly any chance of anyone staying with the police for a long time as most of the arrested persons belong to the working class and were rounded up only because they lived in the area where the ‘encounter’ had taken place.”

However, he said the investigators were doing their job to get a lead from the detained persons for a major action, which could help design a new plan to arrest the criminals who had fled the crime-scene.

Two policemen were killed and seven other law-enforcers, including the chief of the Anti-Violent Crime Cell and two officials of an intelligence agency, were wounded at Sohrab Goth last week in what the police said was a crackdown on pro-Taliban militants.

The police claimed to have arrested 79 suspects and seized a sizeable number of sophisticated weapons from a hideout of the “terrorists belonging to certain banned religious outfits”. None of the suspects, however, was hurt in the operation.

The very next day of the police action, an FIR (37/2009) was registered at the Sohrab Goth police station under sections 302, 324, 353 and 427/34, read with Section 7 of the ATA, on the complaint of the Anti-Violent Crime Unit.

However, after the passage of more than a week, the police have not produced any of the detained suspects before the court concerned as was needed under the criminal procedure code while the names of the arrested persons and their association with the “banned religious outfits” was still awaited.

Critics say the law-enforcers have not only failed to arrest any of the suspects involved in the shootout, but they have also made a botched attempt to establish Talibanisation of the city.

“The police do not have powers to keep an arrested person under detention without producing him or her in court within 24 hours of the arrest,” said Iqtidar Ali Hashmi, a noted criminal lawyer.

Police officials believe that the law-enforcers could “seal” the FIR of the suspects if they desired to extend their interrogation without producing them before court.

Mr Hashmi, however, warned that the police’s argument could backfire and the law-enforcers could be charged if the action was challenged in court.

“The family of the arrested men may move a court with the plea that their man has been under illegal detention, as there is no record of their arrest,” he said.

Police high-ups appear to be aware of the gravity of the situation but have yet to undo the violation.

“Our joint investigation team is interrogating the suspects,” said a senior official, wishing not to be named. “There are several issues involved while producing them in court but we hope things will move positively in a day or two. We don’t want to lose the opportunity to arrest more and real persons involved in the crime.”