Kohistan, Kaghan incidents: Hazara police claim to have traced sectarian killers
The killers of Gilgit-bound Shia passengers have been traced, claimed chief investigator into the Babusar Top massacre on Tuesday.
Muhammad Ilyas Khan, SSP Investigation Mansehra, who heads the police team investigating the gruesome incident, made the disclosure at a press conference.
Some 37 Shia passengers have been killed on the way to Gilgit in two separate incidents during the last six months in Hazara division of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.
In both the incidents men in army fatigues plucked passengers off buses and shot them dead.
“Our team is in Chilas, waiting for a go-ahead by the Gilgit-Batistan government, to enter the jurisdiction and arrest the suspects,” SSP Ilyas Khan said.
But the ongoing sectarian tensions in G-B and lack of cooperation on the part of G-B administration were the key hurdles in nabbing the culprits, he said.
The religious and sectarian sensitivities attached to the case have complicated it further, he said.
Investigation into the first incident of killing of 18 Gilgiti Shias in Kohistan on February 28 helped the investigation team gather key information about the second sectarian assault in Kaghan on August 18, Khan said. The two investigation teams probing the Kohistan and Kaghan incidents joined hands and shared the available information and were able to produce the sketches of over 30 attackers, SSP said.
The sketches could not be made public due to some technical reasons, he said.
Police officials are also trying to acquire the mobile phone video footage of the massacre on Babusar Top in Kaghan, which was made by a passenger of the ill-fated bus.
“We have traced the culprits and they are the same men who hauled the Shia passengers off the Gilgit-bound buses and sprayed them with bullets after lining them on the roadside in Kohistan and Kaghan area,” Khan said.
Hazara police shared the information with the Gilgit administration seeking access to the Gilgit-based assassins, but it declined to extend support owing to the ongoing sectarian unrest in the area, he said.
He ruled out the involvement of a foreign hand in the two incidents.
Inspector Siddique, the head of the team investigating the killing of Shia passengers in Kohistan and member of the team probing Kaghan carnage, said the investigators were busy collecting evidence about the suspects. Police sleuths were scouring for clues from bus stands in Rawalpindi to roadside eateries in Kohistan, he said.
He blamed the G-B administration for non-cooperation in getting access to the suspects.
When approached for comments the DIG Astore Ali Sher was not available.
Published in The Express Tribune, August 29th, 2012.
COMMENTS (11)
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@Muslim: The hyperbole propagated above unfortunately is hatred rumour for prejudiced inflammation. Reasons it may go unnoticed by some commentators, though you pointed out it was indeed reported by newspapers and TV channels - so not unnoticed in media - is probably due to the untruthful exaggeration as above which puts some off, or overshadowed by the larger count of confirmed continuous killings of random Shias, and as you also correctly observed, they were part of sectarian anti-Shia hate groups.
Moderate and liberal Sunnis probably distance themselves and consider them extremists who support militants, rather than innocents, targeted in defensive vigilantism, as the Shia militants usually target hate groups and extremists, not just any random Sunnis, unlike the anti-Shia hate groups which take no issue in targeting any random Shia.
Its not a 'both' way thing. Minority Shias are insecure from the onslaught of sectarian cleansing agenda driven mostly by Wahhabi/Salafi/Deoband/Sunni extremist anti-Shia hate groups, on top of other overall terrorist acts they're linked to in Pak. Denying and sanitizing this fact is not helpful either.
@John Lennon: A person killed, no matter which sect they belong to, is like whole humanity killed. So rather than urging people not to kill each other, fueling the situation by terming it persecution is also a retort, and not useful at all.
pakistan should really now change the law and who ever kills or hav militant wings should be hanged. this is too much innocents get killed
7 Sunnis have been killed and several others injured in Gilgit during the last 8 days. The media is too coward to report facts as they are.
Criminals are on both sides. The public is suffering due to closure of schools, roads and a general sense of fear in the entire region.
Criminals have no sects. All of us should isolate them and renounce them. They are our common enemies.
@Gilgiti: Although killing of innocent passengers only because they were Shias was terrifying and deplorable, there had been reports of Sunni killings in Gilgit - may be not on a scale suggested above - which went unnoticed. Also, after the recent bus incident, there was a spate of indiscriminate killings of Sunnis who belong to anti-shia groups in Karachi. Later is not a hatred rumor but a fact reported in almost all newspapers and TV channels. Having said that, I wonder when this reactionary killings will stop? Why can't we - Shias and Sunnis both - stop killing each other? In fact, why we kill each other, in first place?
What kind of permission?? number of innocent people killed....waiting for more bloodshed. Just lay the siege at their hideouts and made example out of them
@Abdullah: Please give detail which incident you are talking about. If you can not please dont disinform.
@Abdullah Nothing happend of this this sort in Gilgit Bazaar ever so please don't spread hatred rumors!!!
What about the killers of 50 sunnis killed in Gilgit bazaar (not reported by media) ?