Sindhi separatist offshoot sets alarm bells ringing for law enforcement agencies

Law enforcement agencies are going after the militants belonging to an offshoot of a proscribed Sindhi nationalist group following a recent attack on a police officer in suburb of Karachi, The News has learnt.

The Sindhudesh Revolutionary Army (SRA), a Sindhi separatist outfit, claimed the responsibility of an attack on Riaz Amir, a police officer, who was injured on February 28 near Jogi Morr within the limits of the Shah Latif police station.

Terming the attack a revenge for the killing of Irshad Ranjhani in February last year, the SRA said in a statement that the police officer was “one of his murderers”. The group also vowed to continue its struggle till “complete freedom of Sindhudesh”. Amir was injured in the attack and hospitalised for treatment. Police had registered a case against the SRA.

Ranjhani, a Jeay Sindh Tehreek (JST) leader, was shot dead on February 6 last year by a Cattle Colony UC chairman, Abdul Raheem Shah. Police claimed that according to police investigations, Ranjhani had intended to rob the UC chairman after which he was shot in self-defence by the latter.

However, the slain man’s family claimed that Ranjhani had nothing to do with any robbery and was killed in a brutal way. The police later also arrested the UC chairman for denying medical help to Ranjhani after shooting him.

However, the recent attack on the police officer shows that because of the ongoing crackdown, the Sindhi separatist outfits, including the Sindhu Desh Liberation Army (SDLA) and the SRA, are weakened but not fully vanquished, police officers believe.

The SDLA is an underground militant outfit linked with the Jeay Sindh Mutahaid Mahaz (JSMM), a Sindhi nationalist group led by Shafi Burfat. In 2013, Pakistan’s interior ministry banned the JSMM for their involvement in province-wide violence, and placed Burfat, who lives in Europe in self-exile, on its list of wanted persons. The activities of the JSMM have been stopped since 2014, when its members allegedly launched attacks on Chinese projects and government installations in the province.

However, a few years back, Syed Asghar Shah, a leader of the JSMM hailing from Jamshoro district, abandoned the group after developing differences with Burfat over funds, and later formed its own outfit, the SLA, according to a security official in Karachi.

He said the SLA also operated under the name of the Sindhu Desh Liberation Front (SDLF), mainly to dodge law enforcement agencies in escaping the crackdown.

The crackdown intensified against the SLA in July 2017 after the outfit tried to attack Chinese engineers in the Steel Town area in a Karachi’s suburb through a remote-controlled explosion. However, no casualties were reported in the attack. Last year, after Ranjhani’s murder, the SLA also took the responsibility of killing three ethnic Pashtun labourers in Larkana.

“The SLA has also been weakened but the recent attack has alerted law enforcement agencies again,” said a senior law enforcement official. “The SLA not only posed a threat to Chinese interests in the province but also stoke up ethnic tension.”

The law enforcement agencies have intensified their intelligence-based operation on the SLA that typically confined its operations and hideouts to Sindhi-populated areas of the city and its members are using banners of other nationalist groups, he said.

He added that the JST, another Sindhi nationalist party, has recently come under the radar after its chief Dr. Safdar Sarki, who is a US national, appeared in a video with MQM founder Altaf Hussain last month.