A year on: CID still looking for an SP to replace Chaudhry Aslam

Anti-extremist cell has kept busy and managed to arrest over 60 militants last year

KARACHI:

A year after the city lost its iron man, SP Chaudhry Aslam, the Crime Investigation Department (CID) has been unable to replace him.

SP Aslam was killed in a bomb blast on the Lyari Expressway on January 9 last year while he was on his way to work.

When the CID’s anti-extremist cell was established in February 2004, Aslam and senior officer Omar Shahid Hamid used to manage it together but the latter left after some time, after which Aslam was the one running the cell. His absence has, indeed, left a vacuum that the CID has yet to fill. The department has been unable to find an SP-rank official who is willing to take Aslam’s place. Right now, DSP Ali Raza has taken charge of the anti-extremist cell that Aslam was managing.

“No doubt, Aslam sahab’s style of working was matchless,” DSP Raza told The Express Tribune. “But if we compare it to other cells of the CID, we are still the best.”

Apart from the anti-extremist cell, other CID departments are being headed by senior officers who were demoted as they had received out-of-turn promotions, added Raza. These officers are, however, being supervised by the CID’s AIG, the DIG and the SSP for operations and investigations.

“There may be some developments soon as the National Counter Terrorism Authority (Nacta) is in the pipeline,” Raza added.

Performance chart

The anti-extremist cell has been keeping busy after Aslam’s death. The team discovered two explosives-manufacturing factories in the city. It killed at least 13 militants belonging to alQaeda, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, and arrested over 60 last year.

The cell has also killed Sohail Dada and Fahad Pathan, two notorious operational commanders of the Lyari gang war on whom the government had placed Rs1 million as reward money.

My way or the highway

Aslam’s work mantra was controversial and he had made numerous enemies along the way as he chased after militants and terrorist groups in the city. Targeting Aslam was a ‘grand plan’ for the terrorists, claimed officers in the police department, adding that more than four separate militant groups joined hands to remove Aslam from their path.

On January 9, 2013, a suicide blast took down the brave cop and the TTP claimed responsibility. The militant group claimed that they carried out ‘a successful attack’ to avenge the numerous militants Aslam had gunned down.

This was the second major attack on Aslam as earlier, in September 2011, the TTP had attacked Aslam’s house in DHA Phase VIII. Aslam escaped another terror bid in July 2013 when a convoy was attacked. Karachi Metropolitan Corporation’s municipal commissioner Matanat Ali Khan was killed in the attack as the militant’s believed that Aslam was part of the convoy.

“Apart from these three big ones, Aslam was under threat for a long time,” explained CID DIG Zafar Bukhari, as he spoke to The Express Tribune. “Before this deadly attack, the militants tried several times to attack Aslam but they could not get to him for some reason or the other.”

An enemy to several militant groups, Aslam was taken down by a fatal attack carried out by the TTP Mohmand chapter, along with TTP Swat, alQaeda and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. “The actual plan was made by the TTP Mohmand chapter but other groups were also involved,” said DIG Bukhari. “The operatives who attacked Aslam have been killed but the masterminds have yet to be caught. They may have been killed during the military operation in Waziristan.”

As for Aslam’s family, they have no hope that there will be justice. “No major attacks in Pakistan have ever been resolved then how can we expect Aslam’s to be any different,” claimed his widow. “There will no Chaudhry Aslam ever if the department fails to probe his case and punish the culprits.”

She said that the department only took care of her children’s tuition fee for one year. She has yet to receive a notification for her son’s appointment in the police department, and the plot that the authorities had promised.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 9^th, 2015.