Sehwan bombing facilitators arrested

KARACHI: The Counter-terrorism Department (CTD) of Sindh Police has arrested all the three facilitators of Sehwan suicide blast from a seminary of south Punjab, it has been learnt.

The blast at the shrine of Sufi saint Lal Shahbaz Qalandar occurred on February 16, 2017 in which over 100 people were killed and around 150 injured. Sources in the police department confided to this reporter that Hafeez Pindrani Birohi group associated with the militant outfit Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) was behind the bombing.

The suicide bomber was a close relative of Hafeez Pindrani Birohi.  The three facilitators, who were earlier identified through the CCTV cameras installed at the shrine, were arrested by the CTD during a raid on a seminary in Sadiqabad in the Punjab  last month.

Sources in the law enforcement agencies also verified the information. One of the arrested facilitators is a close relative of a high-profile cleric of a big seminary in Islamabad who originally belongs to south Punjab, while the remaining two belong to the Federal Administered Tribal Agency (Fata).

Sources said all the three had confessed to their crime and the police had recorded their statements. The arrest will be made public at an appropriate time. This reporter tried to reach the CTD chief Additional Inspector General (AIG) Sanaullah Abbasi through the SMS and phone calls to get his version and waited for 10 days but till the filing of this story on Monday evening, there was no response.