Afghans involved in most of terror attacks: Bugti

ISLAMABAD: Caretaker Interior Minister Sarfraz Bugti Wednesday disclosed that Afghan citizens were involved in most of the terrorist incidents that took place in Pakistan and said the recent suicide bombing on a security forces convoy in Bannu was carried out by an Afghan. 

“Afghan citizens were involved in 14 out of 26 terrorist incidents which took place in Pakistan”, he said while briefing the Senate Committee on Interior that met here with Senator Moshin Aziz in the chair. 

Senators Kamil Ali Agha, Saiful-lah Abro, Shahadat Awan, Fauzia Arshad, Dinesh Kumar, Sania Nishtar, Sardar Muhammad Shafiq Ta-reen and Samina Mumtaz Zahri participated in the meeting. Bugti told the committee that 400,000 people living illegally in Pakistan had repatriated. 

In the first phase 300,000 people repatriated but now their number is close to 400,000, he added. He said 296,000 people repatriated on their own but an impression was given that they were being arrested and sent back. “We want to bring Pakistan into a system. People enter Pakistan from the Chaman border and do what they have to do and leave. There has been a joke that whoever wants, comes here,” Bugti said. He said a mechanism would be made within a week concerning the ‘One Document Regime’ in the border area of Chaman and ease of do-ing business. The committee discussed “The Rehriban Livelihood Protection Bill, 2023” in detail pre-sented by Senator Sania Nishtar, who gave a briefing on the objectives of the bill. Chairman CDA told the committee that the Local Government Act 2015 was already there in this regard and if the bill was passed, an equivalent structure would be set up. After a detailed discussion on the bill, the committee chairman directed the CDA and all bodies concerned to present a comparative review of both the bills in the next meeting. The Pakistan Penal Code (amendment) Bill, 2023 (Amendment in section) was presented by Senator Shahadat Awan. The bills presented by Senator Shahadat Awan including “The Provincial Motor Vehicles (Amendment) Bill 2023 (Insertion of new section 101A) and “The Islamabad Capital Territory Charities Registration, Regulation and Facilitation (Amendment) Bill, 2023” were ap-proved. The Parliamentary Reporters Association representatives raised the issue of murder of jour-nalist Jan Muhammad Maher complaining that 108 days had passed but the murderers were still at large. IG Sindh and SSP Sukkur briefed the committee on the issue. The IG Sindh said together with the Federal Union of Journalists’ representatives, they had met the Sindh chief minister on the issue, who had given 30 days to arrest the culprits out of which 12 days had passed. He said according to re-ports, the killers of Jan Muhammad Maher had taken refuge in the Kacha area and raids were being conducted to arrest them. The committee chairman appreciated the work and courage of IG Sindh and issued instructions to bring the case to a speedy conclusion.