Sahiwal operation was ill-planned: govt

LAHORE: Punjab's Additional Chief Secretary (Home) Fazeel Asghar said Wednesday the Sahiwal operation was carried out in continuation of a chain of anti-terrorism action going on for many months.

Briefing editors and TV anchors Wednesday at the Chief Minister’s Secretariat, he maintained that the slain driver Zeeshan was a confirmed facilitator of terrorists, but added that the operation was carried out in an inept manner with bad planning. He promised the responsible officials would be penalised.

Fazeel Asghar said a selfie found from Zeeshan’s phone was part of the evidence linking Zeeshan to terrorists. The ACS said that after terrorist Adeel Hafeez was killed in Faisalabad operation, his SIM had led to this operation. The location of Zeeshan’s area was received from Adeel’s SIM, he added. He further said Zeeshan’s car had crossed Manga at 9.30am, following which the operation was carried out.

He said Adeel Hafeez, Usman and Zeeshan were part of Daesh controlled from Afghanistan. He said Zeeshan's car was used as escort of Adeel. The ACS also played an audio recording of Zeeshan's talk with Adeel. He said there was no headquarter of Daesh in Punjab, but it used local insignificant groups to carry out terrorist activities. He said that due to robust anti-terror effort on part of the CTD, there was a visible decline of 87 per cent in terrorist incidents. He gave a graphic presentation of how the CTD had reached Zeeshan.