Rangers arrest four ‘facilitators’ of Lyari gangsters

ATC allows 90-day preventive detention of FCS office-bearers;

two hitmen held in separate raids

Karachi   

The paramilitary force announced on Tuesday the arrests of six suspects, including four officials of the Fisherman Cooperative Society (FCS) who were allegedly working as facilitators of Lyari gangsters.

The spokesman for the Sindh Rangers said Saleem Deedak, Mehar Bux, Mohammad Saeed Baloch and Dil Murad were arrested during raids in the Kalri area. He said those taken into custody offered resistance during the swoops.

The suspects were moved to the Rangers headquarters for interrogation and later taken to an anti-terrorism court, which allowed their preventive detention for 90 days.

The initial interrogation showed that the four were affiliated with the Aziz Jan Baloch and Baba Ladla groups and were working as their facilitators. 

They further disclosed that at the request of Uzair Baloch they had recruited 150 men who belonged to the Lyari gang war. They admitted providing funds to the Baloch Liberation Army. The Rangers spokesman said criminals of the Lyari gang war and Baloch Liberation Army purchased weapons with funds provided by the suspects to carry out acts of terrorism in Karachi and Balochistan.

The four also allegedly provided millions of rupees acquired through corruption to well-known political personalities of Sindh. They were nominated in murder FIRs at different police stations of Karachi but the cases were taken back on political grounds. 

‘Hitmen’ captured

The spokesperson said the paramilitary force conducted a raid in the Kharadar area in the wee hours of Tuesday and arrested an alleged target killer, Mohammad Farooq alias Lendi, and  shifted him to their headquarters. 

The ATC allowed the Rangers to keep him in preventive detention for three months.

Farooq was said to have admitted that he belonged to the militant wing of a political party and was involved in a number of target killings. He disclosed that he was involved in fighting with Baloch people and used to dump weapons and extort traders in the area. 

In a raid carried out in the Ramswami area, paramilitary soldiers caught another suspected hitman, Mohammad Adnan Siddiqi, after facing resistance. 

The Rangers got his 90-day Preventive detention from the ATC.

The spokesman said Siddiqi belonged to the notorious militant wing of a political party and admitted murdering six people in attacks. He also admitted involvement in nine cases of attempt to murder and extortion. 

Four ‘criminals’ held

Rangers’ personnel conducted raids in Korangi and Tharu Lane areas, and apprehended four suspected criminals, including Lyari gangsters. Weapons, including SMGs, uni-barrel rocket launchers, pistols, hand grenades  and Avan grenades were seized from the suspects.

Iranian diesel seized

Rangers’ personnel raided three illegal oil refineries in Gadap and Murad Memon Goth, seized 80,000 litres of illegal Iran’s diesel stored in underground tanks and arrested five smugglers.

Civil society demo

Before the Sindh Rangers formally announced on Tuesday evening the arrests of Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum Secretary General Saeed Baloch (PFF) and FCS office-bearers Dilmurad Baloch and Mehar Bakhsh Baloch, a larger number of civil society activists and residents of Lyari organised a protest outside the Karachi Press Club in the afternoon demanding their immediate release.

Paramilitary soldiers had arrested the three on January 16, accusing them of allegedly financing the head of a criminal syndicate and embezzling the fisheries’ funds, PFF leaders said.

After the paramilitary force failed to bring Saeed Baloch, who is also secretary general of the FCS’s labour union, to court and officially show his arrest despite the passage of a week of his detention, civil society groups of the city jointly organised the protest to press the government for his release. The groups also went to the Sindh High Court against his illegal detention.

Speakers at the protest said Baloch had been arrested in baseless cases. 

Asad Iqbal Butt, vice-president of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, said Baloch was a prominent human rights and trade union activist who had been on the frontline of struggles for human rights and environmental protection, and challenging powerful actors threatening the wellbeing of the fisherfolk and their communities. “We are deeply concerned about his whereabouts,” Butt said.

Shafi Baloch, brother of Saeed Baloch, said that on 16 January his brother was called over the phone to visit the Rangers office located in the Mauripur area at 4:30pm. He managed to inform his colleagues by phone that he had been taken into custody by the Rangers. “Since then, we have had no knowledge about his whereabouts,” he said, adding that no charges had been framed against him nor had he been presented to any court.

Fatima Majeed, the PFF’s vice-chairperson, demanded a transparent inquiry into the case.

“Saeed Baloch is a prominent civil society activist who has been struggling for fisherfolk’s rights since the inception of the PFF,” Majeed said.  “There is some misunderstanding and the Rangers should investigate it properly.”

Karamat Ali, director of the Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research, said bureaucrats in government institutions were involved in corruption, while Baloch was the secretary general of the FCS’s labour union. “How can a trade unionist be part of embezzling the funds?” he questioned. 

Other prominent civil society activists who attended the protest included Nasir Mansoor, Farhat Parveen, Engineer Hameed Baloch, Latif Mughal, Shaikh Majeed, Habibuddin Junadi, Naghma Shaikh, Talib Kachi and Ayub Qureshi.

FCS crackdown

With three top officials of the FCS behind bars over corruption charges and supporting criminal gangs and others going underground, the arrest of Baloch was part of the ongoing crackdown, said sources in the FCS.  

The FCS’ troubles started when the provincial government appointed Dr Nisar Morai, close aide to a top Pakistan People’s Party leader, as its chairman in January 2014, replacing the previous one through illegal means. 

Sources in the fishing industry said a myriad of problems, including corruption, extortion and security, followed the controversial appointment. 

Rangers arrested Sultan Qamar Siddiqui, the acting-chairman of the FCS, on June 17 last year and its two directors, Muhammad Khan Chachar and Rana Shahid, on June 19 over their alleged involvement in taking extortion money, killings, corruption and funding Lyari’s criminal syndicates. 

Morai had already left the country four months ago before the crackdown, fearing arrest.