Further investigation: Police arrest 11 people in raids across the city

Two suspects arrested in relation to attack on SP Farooq Awan.

KARACHI:

The police have arrested 11 people in separate raids conducted around the city on Tuesday.

Two more suspects were reportedly detained in connection with the attack on SP Farooq Awan last week. The suspects were taken into custody by law enforcement agencies during a targeted raid conducted on a tip-off in Sultanabad, Manghopir.

Sources claim that the suspects were Burmese nationals who have links with a banned outfit and had recently been released from jail. The suspects were taken to an undisclosed location for further questioning.

Awan, who is the chief of the Special Investigation Unit (SIU) of the Criminal Investigation Agency (CIA), was targeted with a remote-controlled bomb planted in a vehicle in Defence Housing Authority on Thursday evening. The blast claimed two lives and left eight others injured, including two policemen. SP Awan managed to escape with minor injuries.

Case update

There has been no major breakthrough in the investigations into the attack on SP Awan. Different units of the Karachi and Sindh police, including CIA and Crime Investigation Department, are carrying out raids in various parts of the city at hideouts of banned outfits.

Over two dozen suspects were apprehended since the attack happened last week. Sources said that the suspects were detained on the suspicion of being involved in the attack. Most of them, however, were released after the interrogation.

Arrests

Separately, District East police claim to have arrested three suspects allegedly involved in various cases of target killings and street crimes. Syed Sajjad Haider Zaidi was arrested by the Ferozabad police, Saeed Khan was arrested by the Gulshan-e-Iqbal police and Kamran alias Bengali was arrested by the Brigade police. These arrests were disclosed during a press conference held by District East SSP Pir Muhammad Shah at his office on Tuesday afternoon.

According to SSP Shah, Zaidi confessed to have killed eight people in different parts of the city while Kamran and Saeed Khan said that they were involved in various cases of street crimes. Meanwhile, the SIU police claim to have arrested four members of an extortion group. The arrested suspects were identified as Majid, Talha Qureshi, Syed Adnan and Owais Khan. According to SIU officials, the accused revealed to have collected Rs1.5 million from a trader and were demanding money from another trader when they were arrested.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 1^st, 2014.