Karachi carnage: Police find parallels with other recent attacks

43 Ismailis laid to rest; 185 suspects detained

KARACHI:

As mourners laid to rest 43 members of the Ismaili community on Thursday following a deadly assault on a bus in Karachi the previous day, police rounded up 185 suspects in a desperate bid to accelerate efforts to solve the case.

Even 24 hours after the carnage, doctors at the Aga Khan University Hospital were desperately trying to save the lives of five women and a man who were also on the ill-fated bus.

Forty-three people, including 16 women, died on the spot. Seventeen-year-old Saif succumbed to his injuries later that night at the Memon Hospital and Nafisa Farooq, 39, passed away on Thursday.

Investigators looking into major attacks carried out in the past month largely found themselves clutching at straws.

All they seem to know at this point is that the people behind Wednesday’s attack and those involved in the recent string of violent incidents – social worker Sabeen Mahmud and Bin Qasim DSP Abdul Fateh Sangri’s murders and the attack on Jinnah Medical and Dental College’s Debra Lobo – might belong to the same group.

“A similar pattern was observed in all the four cases,” said a senior police officer.

“But in the Debra Lobo and bus incidents, the assailants had employed the same modus operandi, including the Islamic State leaflets left behind.”

The officer said the police were trying to ascertain if the empty Kalashnikov shells found from the site of the bus carnage belonged to the official Kalashnikov that DSP Sangri’s killers had taken away. “The police suspect that the same weapons were used in the Debra Lobo, DSP Sangri and bus attacks.”

Talking to The Express Tribune, Sachal DSP Qamar Ahmed said the police were waiting for the forensic reports of the empty shells collected from the sites of the recent incidents.

Another police officer said geo-fencing was being employed to find more leads. “The assailants might have used mobile phones before and after the attack. Nearly a dozen suspected phone calls have been found and we are trying to trace the whereabouts of those who made these calls.”

Besides forensic evidence, the investigators have also recorded the statements of a few witnesses. However, the police did not disclose the statements because, they said, revealing the information could affect the investigation.

185 detained

The law enforcement agencies have accelrated their efforts to bring the perpetrators to book. On Thursday evening, a police party conducted a raid in SITE Town’s Frontier Colony, a locality known for harbouring militants belonging to different organisations. Forty suspects were detained during the search operation.

Later, Rangers officials carried out raids in Sohrab Goth, Gulshan-e-Iqbal, Shah Faisal Colony, Korangi, New Karachi, North Nazimabad and Orangi. They detained 145 suspects with weapons.

Chairing a meeting on the bus carnage, Karachi police chief Ghulam Qadir Thebo recommended that the government award Rs10 million to anyone who assists the police in arresting the perpetrators.


Published in The Express Tribune, May 15^th, 2015.