Chaudhry Aslam murder: Investigators say attackers had 2 explosives-laden vehicles

Assailants had brought another vehicle as backup to ensure the target was achieved.

KARACHI: Investigation into the assassination of SP Chaudhry Aslam Khan on Monday revealed that the attackers had a second vehicle with explosives as backup, Express News reported.

Aslam and his two guards were killed on January 9 when a suspected suicide bomber – later identified as Naeemullah – drove an explosives-laden vehicle into his car on Lyari Expressway, in Karachi’s Essa Nagri neighbourhood.

Investigation officers said the assailants had brought two vehicles to the blast site to ensure the target was achieved.

Eyewitnesses said they had seen two vans at the toll booth on the expressway.

SSP CID Niaz Khoso said the investigation officers were waiting for the report on DNA samples collected from the crime scene and that around 15 people are under investigation.

Daredevil cop

Muhammad Aslam Khan, commonly known as Chaudhry Aslam, inspired fear and awe almost everywhere he went.

Usually spotted in his trademark crisp white shalwar kameez with his buttons undone and an unkempt beard, he was known for wearing flashy watches, carrying his Glock 9mm pistol in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

Known as the Sultan Rahi of Sindh police, it is a poignant that he died on the same day that Rahi did.

Attack

A little before 4:40pm, Aslam got on to the Lyari Expressway with two police mobile units trailing behind him. Within minutes, a powerful blast struck Essa Nagri, rocking several other neighbourhoods in the city.

A thick pall of smoke hung over the sky, in open testimony to the destruction wrought scores of feet below. Rumours swirled that among the fatalities was CID’s Aslam, one of three men who died in the attack. Eleven others were injured.

At the time of the blast, Aslam was on his way back to work from home.

When the police got to the blast site, Aslam’s bulletproof black Vigo lay 40 feet away from the blast site, which is the other side of the expressway. The other two men in his vehicle – his driver and gunmen – also died on the spot. One chunk of the expressway’s boundary wall was blown off due to the intensity of the blast. The surface of the expressway’s ramp now has cracks running down the middle.

The policemen who had been following Aslam in the police mobile units fell over the expressway and are reportedly injured. Volunteers found body parts of the injured and dead in the bushes of the Shah Muhammad Suleman graveyard – under the expressway.

Aslam’s men said that his face and chest were damaged in the blast while the bodies of his companions were mutilated.