Investigation: Nine more held for Police Lines attack

‘They arrived in the neighbourhood two days before the blast’.

LAHORE: City police have taken nine more people into custody and are investigating them about last month’s suicide attack at the police lines in Qilla Gujjar Singh.

The number of people under investigation for the attack has reached 11.

Home Minister Shuja Khanzada told The Express Tribune that nine more suspects had been recently taken into custody.

An official with the investigation wing told The Tribune that information from a geo-fencing exercise carried out in the vicinity was now available. He said investigations so far had revealed that the suspects arrived in the neighbourhood two days before the blast. He said the suspects had been in touch with their facilitators in Afghanistan.

Six people, including two police officials, were killed and as many as 26 were injured in the blast on February 17. In a briefing to the press following the attack, Inspector General of Police Mushtaq Sukhera had said that attacker’s target was the police lines. However, the attacker had detonated his suicide vest in a parking lot of a nearby plaza failing to enter the target premises.

An FIR had been registered over the incident by the Qila Gujjar Singh police.

Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan’s Jamaatul Ahrar faction had later claimed responsibility for the attack.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 14^th, 2015.