Governor Ebad’s disclosures have everyone talking

Says MQM’s Karachi Tanzeemi Committee bought weapons haul to fight army and Rangers

KARACHI: Sindh Governor Dr Ishratul Ebad broke his long silence with some shocking revelations on Wednesday. The disclosure, mainly about his erstwhile party, was like a bombshell that instantly became the main talking-point on prime-time television talk-shows.

“A huge weapons haul recovered earlier this month from a house in Azizabad was bought by the Karachi Tanzeemi Committee to fight against Pakistan’s army and rangers,” Ebad said while speaking to journalists at the Ojha campus of Dow University. The Karachi Tanzeemi Committee looks after organisational operations of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement in the metropolis.



Ebad was referring to a massive amount of arms and ammunition police recovered on Oct 5 from an abandoned house near Nine-Zero, the headquarters of MQM, the party he belonged to. The weapons cache was hidden in a huge cavity dug in the house for the purpose.

This is the first time that Ebad, who has been serving as Sindh governor for almost 14 years, spoke candidly about the party he has long quit. And the disclosures came days after Mustafa Kamal, his former party colleague and now chief of Pak Sarzameen Party, accused him of ‘oxygenating’ MQM founder Altaf Hussain and his London-based coterie.

“The government has completed forensic investigation of the weapons [recovered from Azizabad]. The weapons had been bought and dumped by some leaders of a party, along with the Karachi Tanzeem Committee,” he said. Ebad claimed that he had all the information about who bought the weapons and from where.

“The culprits and their facilitators cannot escape strict punishment,” he said. Investigations have revealed three names of the Karachi Tanzeemi Committee. The government will also bring back those who have fled the country.”

As if it wasn’t enough. Governor Ebad also resurrected some other spectres. He spoke about the murder of a former Sindh governor Hakeem Muhamad Saeed, the May 12, 2007 carnage, and the deadly Baldia factory fire – all the horrendous crimes for which the MQM was directly or indirectly blamed.



“They burnt 300 innocent workers alive. They used to extort money from the factory owner to live a luxurious life,” Ebad said while referring to the 2012 alleged arson attack on Ali Enterprises, a garment factory, in the SITE area of Karachi. Nearly 300 workers were burnt to death and hundreds injured in the nightmarish inferno.

“I’ve asked the director general of Rangers and the Sindh police chief to arrest the suspects involved in Baldia factory fire and May 12 carnage, so that we hang them publicly,” he said. He regretted that political leaders also ‘cheated’ the families of the Baldia factory fire victims because the compensation money was never disbursed to them.

Governor Ebad also spoke about the vicious cycle of targeted violence in the metropolis in which countless innocent lives have been snuffed out since 2007. “We have decided to expose the target killers in front of the media,” he said.

He said the government has received new information in the 1998 murder of Hakeem Saeed. “Law enforcement agencies have started investigation afresh based on the new information to find out who had killed Hakeem Saeed and why,” he said. “The case can be reopened in the court of law.”

The governor was all praise for the Rangers director general for maintaining law and order in Karachi. “The operation was designed by me, DG Rangers and corps commander in 2013,” he said adding that the situation has now been controlled in Karachi.



Governor Ebad also Musfata Kamal, who recently mounted a frontal attack on the governor, and suggested that he visit ‘Ojha Hospital’ for mental treatment. The verbal duel between the two started after an attack on the house of Kamal’s aide Ashfaq Mangi and arrest of two suspects from Kamal’s house Saturday night.

“Mustafa Kamal is a corrupt man. He had worked as a contractor not as city nazim,” Ebad said, adding that he had embezzled billions of rupees during his tenure as mayor of the metropolis. “All the schemes initiated by him had been designed by Jamaat-e-Islami nazim Naimutullah Khan,” he said. “Mustafa Kamal transferred billions of rupees to Malaysia and other countries which must be investigated.”

Referring to Kamal’s first news conference, he said, “If he knew in 2012 that the MQM leadership was pursing RAW policy, then why did he continue as senator until 2014?”

Reacting to Governor Ebad’s tirade, Kamal’s aide Anees Advocate asked the government to put the governor’s name on the ECL, because “he was involved in heinous criminal cases in Karachi”.  “No one but the Governor House had embezzled the compensation money meant for the families of Baldia victims,” he alleged.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 20^th, 2016.