‘Killer of 111 people’ sent to jail on judicial remand

The administrative judge of the anti-terrorism courts (ATCs) on Wednesday sent a suspected target killer involved in the murders of 111 people to prison on judicial remand, seeking the charge sheet against him within two weeks.

The suspect, Abdus Salam Ifran, was presented before the court by the Soldier Bazaar police which submitted that the interrogation with the suspect was complete and the charge sheet against him was being prepared with the help of the prosecution department.

Irfan was arrested earlier this month by the anti-street crime squad of District East and Soldier Bazaar police. According to the investigators, the suspect was a worker of the pro-Altaf Hussain Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), dubbed as MQM-London, and an employee of Abbassi Shaheed Hospital.

Briefing the media after his arrest, District East SSP Ghulam Azfar Mahesar said the suspect had admitted to his involvement in 111 cases of target killings including those of two army personnel, one navy employee, eight policemen, two civil government employees, four workers of the Pakistan Peoples Party, 14 Muhajir Qaumi Movement-Haqiqi workers, 11 people belonging to the Pashtun and Punjabi communities, a doctor, and five girls after subjecting them to rape.

The officer added that the suspect was arrested in the Nishter Road area during a joint raid by the anti-street crime squad and Soldier Bazaar police. “He started target killings in Karachi in 1994 with the killing of rival political party workers of the Muhajir Qaumi Movement-Haqiqi,” SSP Mahesar claimed. “He along with his companions also killed 57 people on the suspicion of being informants and seven for refusing to pay extortion money.”

The officer said the suspect was also a key suspect of the May 12, 2007 carnage as he along with the MQM’s target killing team of Orangi Town, which included Nadeem, alias Marble, Khalid Siddiqui, Nehal, Zubair, alias Burger, and others, had reached the Guru Mandir area on that day where they fired at the building of a private news channel and also resorted to indiscriminate firing while travelling towards Numaish Chowrangi, in which three people were killed.

His criminal record also confirmed his participation in 57 cases of murders and kidnappings in the jurisdiction of the Mominabad police station of District West, SSP Mahesar said, adding that that suspect was declared an absconder in all those cases.

According to the SSP, Irfan was arrested for the first time in 1998 by the Orangi Town police and released on parole in 2004, after which he went into hiding. He was again arrested in 2014 by the Gulberg police after an exchange of fire and later again went into hiding after getting bail, the officer said. He was also injured during an encounter with the Rangers but managed to escape, the SSP claimed, adding that many of his accomplices had either been killed or arrested, while some of them had holed up, for whose arrests raids were being conducted.

The ATCs’ administrative judge sent the suspect to jail in judicial custody and sought the charge sheet against him by November 13. The suspect is currently booked in an FIR pertaining to possessing illicit weapons and explosives. According to the prosecution, the investigators are preparing a list of the cases lodged against him at all the police stations so that he could be tried accordingly.