Scouring for suspects: Police impose hold-up at select times

10 people taken into custody in city-wide searches.

LAHORE: Police took 10 people into custody late on Saturday during searches initiated in wake of the Peshawar carnage across Lahore.

Searches were carried out in the City, the Cantonment, the Civil Lines, the Saddar and the Iqbal Town divisions. Suspects were held from the Islampura, Shahdara, South Cantonment, North Cantonment, Qila Gujjar Singh, Old Anarkali, Nawab Town, Hanjerwal, Kahna, Shadman, Millat Park, Nawankot and Kot Lakhpat areas.



Operations DIG Haider Ashraf told The Express Tribune that three of the suspects were Afghans, three were from Peshawar and one was from Sialkot. He said police were verifying their identities and screening their backgrounds to ascertain whether they had links with any outlawed outfits. Ashraf said police had checked 3,000 people late on Saturday and early on Sunday and had conducted raids on 60 hostels across the city.

The Operations Wing of the police has also started imposing a general hold-up between 7pm and 9pm daily following a directive from IGP Mushtaq Ahmed Sukhera to prevent any untoward incident. Public places, thoroughfares and markets were picketed during the hold-up. Pedestrians and motorcyclists were allowed to go forward after being subjected to physical searches.

DIG Ashraf said all vehicles including those with government number plates had been thoroughly inspected at pickets around the city. He said bomb disposal squads had been put on high alert during the hold-up.

A pistol, a repeater and eight bullets were seized and 25 vehicles and 287 motorcycles were impounded late on Saturday during the hold-up.

Kot Lakhpat

Separately, security has been beefed up at the Kot Lakhpat Central Jail where four convicts likely to be executed soon are being held.

1,000 Punjab Rangers personnel, 500 from the Prisons Department and commandos from the army and the police’s Quick Response Force have been tasked with securing the prison. An official from the jail told The Express Tribune that preparations had been completed for the executions. He said the convicts had been transferred to a cell near the gallows. The official said prison authorities had been directed to finalise preparations for the convicts’ executions. He said they had been instructed to follow orders in this regard at a moment’s notice. The official said no information regarding the expected date and time of the expected executions had been revealed.

“Muhammad Kamran, Ahsan Azeem and Umer Nadeem were convicted of an attack on an army camp in Gujrat. Seven military personnel were slain in the attack,” Kot Lakhpat Central Jail officials told The Express Tribune on the condition of anonymity. They said Muhammad Zahid, the fourth convict, was involved in an attack on an office of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in Multan. The officials said that 32 people had been killed in the attack.

Security has also been beefed up at the District Camp Jail. Scores of commandoes have been deployed at the prison and pickets have been placed in its vicinity.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 22^nd, 2014.