Sehwan blast: No substantive evidence found yet

By Imdad Soomro
March 16, 2017

Despite passage of almost one month, the security agencies have found no substantive evidence about the Lal Shahbaz Qalandar Shrine bombing.

However, investigators belonging to the law enforcement agencies (LAEs) exclusively informed The News that Abdul Hafeez Pindrani Barohi group of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) had conducted the deadly attack with the support of Qadir alias Haji.

Haji is said to be a close relative of Ramzi Yousaf and Khalid Shaikh Muhammad based in Badri village of Wadh, Balochistan.

They said the role of criminals from Sindh and Balochistan also could not be ruled out as facilitators in the attack, who could have provided logistic support to the culprits.

The blast occurred at the Lal Shahbaz Qalandar Shrine in Sehwan, Jamshoro district on February 17 killing over 90 people and injuring 200 others.

The Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) of Sindh Police and three other civilian and non-civilian intelligence agencies were tasked with investigating the case but sources in the CTD of police and other intelligence agencies informed The News that no convincing and substantive evidence had been found by them to-date.

At least 50 persons were apprehended by different LEAs from Sehwan, Dadu, Shikarpur and Hyderabad but majority of them were released.

Additional Inspector General of Counter-Terrorism Department Sanaullah Abbasi told The News that they had no substantive evidences except identification of faces of suicide bomber and his facilitators but the Sindh Police and CTD were fully capable of detecting the matter like other high-profile matters and hopefully this issue will also resolve soon.

“I believe in genuine work and not in any forced confessions and in this issue apart from forensic evidences we are also relying upon human intelligence which is very important,” Abbasi added.

Replying to a question, he said the role of Barohi nexus of Balochistan could not be ruled out and all such information about them was handed over to Balochistan government.