Initial investigation: Always on alert, Tanoli’s guards say no to suicide attack

At the time of the blast, his guard Hussain was standing 25 feet away.

KARACHI: The police suspect that Inspector Shafiq Tanoli was the target of a suicide attack in Old Sabzi Mandi on Thursday morning. His security guards — the men who followed him more closely than his shadow, however, believe otherwise.

They think that while the Inspector was the intended target, someone had planted the bomb close to where he was. “We are always on alert,” said Tanoli’s injured guard, Ashiq Hussain. “We did not allow anyone to go up to or reach our sahib.”

At the time of the blast, Hussain was standing roughly 25-feet away, right outside Shahzeb Medical Store, keeping an eye on Tanoli, who was sitting at Aijaz Hyder’s shop with three other men identified as Aijaz, Jalal Ahmed and Muhammad Dawood.

According to the police, this is where the suspected militant blew himself up and killed all those present inside the shop. The version presented by Tanoli’s guards is a little different. They claim that they did not let anyone get close to the Inspector that morning. The two children from the neighourhood who were playing near the shop were asked to leave by the guards.

“He used to sit at the shop every day, it was a part of his routine. Sometimes even before breakfast,” said Hussain who had been working with the Inspector for the last two years. “While he had serious threats to his life, he was walking around the area without us. We had an eye on him but our sahib considered the area his own.”

Hussain remembers Tanoli sitting in a chair with Aijaz seated on a stool and Jalal and Dawood on a bench. His memory was a bit hazy, for example, he asked what happened to the baby girl Jalal was holding before the blast? “Everything was destroyed after the explosion,” he said. “Who was the fifth casualty? I think it was a pedestrian.”

The blast left Hussain’s right arm and leg injured. It also affected his hearing ability. This is not the first time Hussain was injured on duty. Last year in February when Tanoli was attacked in Mauripur, Hussain was hit with a bullet.

“I had to talk to him about my dues and was thinking about when to bring it up when the blast happened,” he told The Express Tribune at Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC).

Abdul Qadar, who worked at the samosa shop next to Aijaz’s shop, said he was not aware that Tanoli was a police officer with so many death threats. “The blast took place as I entered my shop,” said Qadar, who is from Tharparkar. “All of a sudden everything was enveloped in complete darkness. I moved to a safer place after a few minutes.” He added that there were very few people in the area before the blast as it took place around 9am and there was no traffic.

At the hospital

The first body brought to JPMC was Tanoli’s and according to the hospital’s joint executive director, Dr Seemin Jamali, five bodies were brought to the hospital. One of the bodies brought in was dismembered, she added, they still had not identified the individual.

Two people injured in the blast were also brought to the hospital for treatment. Dr Jamali said that both were in a stable condition. 

Published in The Express Tribune, April 25^th, 2014.