No headway in ‘Sindh’s biggest arms bust’

Investigation officer says in his report that the police could not establish any link to reach the perpetrators

KARACHI: Investigators of Sindh's 'biggest arms bust' saga submitted on Tuesday before the anti-terrorism courts' administrative judge that they were still clueless in tracing the culprits.

A huge cache of arms, ammunition and explosives was found hidden in a customised 10x10-feet underground tank of a 120-yard house in Azizabad in October as police raided the place acting on a tip-off by intelligence agencies.

The investigation officer told the judge in his report that the police could not establish any link to reach the perpetrators as nearly everybody who would have led to them was untraceable.

The house was owned by four people on different occasions in the past, he said, adding that the last one was a woman, but she could not be located as neither was there any information about her in the record nor did the neighbours know anything about her.

He recommended that the case should be put on dormant until there is some arrest made by the investigators or some substantial evidence is found in connection with this. The administrative judge forwarded the case to ATC-IX for further proceeding on the police report as per the law. According to the Code of Criminal Procedure, the police are liable to inform a relevant court about progress in investigation of a case within a stipulated time since its registration.

According to a recently surfaced forensic examination report, nearly all the weapons, except a few rifles, were foreign-made and were similar to those used by NATO forces. The same was also observed by Karachi police chief AIG Mushtaq Mehr in the press conference on the bust.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 30^th, 2016.