Court directs police to continue investigating the case, arrest those responsible
By our correspondent
An anti-terrorism court (ATC) onMonday accepted an A-class report by the police in the DHA car explosion case, as the suspects remain untraceable. The court, however, directed the police to continue investigating the incident. A white Suzuki Mehran parked in an empty plot in DHA Phase-V had exploded under mysterious circumstances on December 3 last year. Two packets containing eight kilograms of explosives and some cylinders were found lying around the burnt car. The investigating officer told the ATC on Monday that the car was stolen from the Jamshed Quarters neighbourhood a day before the incident, and that its owner had filed a complaint with the police. The IO said that the vehicle’s owner was interrogated, but no involvement on his part was found. ATC-XVI judge Rashid Mustafa said in his order that the officer is satisfied that prima facie the vehicle owner has no connection with the incident, but rather he is a victim. The judgement said that in these circumstances the police report under A-class is accepted with the direction to the IO to keep investigating the matter and arrest the culprits involved. The FIR of the incident was registered at the CTD police station under sections 3, 4 and 5 of the Explosive Substances Act, read with Section 7 of the Anti-Terrorism Act. The incident An explosion was heard in the upmarket DHA neighbourhood at 3:22am on December 3, 2018. The blast occurred in a stolen car parked in an empty plot on Khayaban-e-Mujahid. South Zone police chief DIG Javed Alam Odho suspected that a bomb might have been planted in the car, adding that there was no casualty and that the fire caused by the explosion had been extinguished. He said the impact of the blast would have intensified if the gas cylinders in the vehicle had also exploded. If a bomb was planted in the car, the terrorists’motive might have been to spread fear, he added. District South Investigation- I SSP Tariq Dharejo said that apparently three kilograms of explosives were used for the explosion, adding that the bomb might have been fixed to the cylinders, but they did not blow up. He said the police were trying to gather footage from nearby cameras to identify the suspects, adding that they had not found any clue linking the incident to the Chinese consulate attack. No organisation had claimed responsibility for the explosion, he added. Bomb disposal squad experts said they were yet to prepare a report on the blast. According to their initial findings, there were five LPG cylinders in the car in addition to the vehicle’s CNG cylinder. “So far there is no evidence suggesting it was a cylinder blast, as all of the cylinders, even the car’s own CNG cylinder, remained unexploded,” said one of the experts. Investigators said a separatist party of Balochistan could have been behind the incident, adding that the police were questioning the suspects already detained in connection with the Chinese consulate attack. The locals were asleep when the blast took place. “It woke me up,” said Sheharyar Ali, who lives about a kilometre away from the site of the explosion. “I also heard multiple gunshots before and after the blast.” Investigators said they were also talking to the managements of nearby restaurants because the food in the car suggested that the terrorists responsible for the blast might have made some purchases at one of the eateries. The stolen car Police said a car was stolen from the Jamshed Quarters neighbourhood at around 7pm on December 2, adding that a police complaint was registered within half an hour of the robbery. They said the car was destroyed in the explosion, adding that it was registered in the name of a man named Arshad Awan, while the complaint was filed by his sister Hina. Darakhshan SHO Arshad Janjua said the car was first stolen in 2007 from the Boat Basin area and found in SITE Area five days later, adding that its current owner is a government employee who said he had bought the vehicle recently.