LAHORE, Feb 7: Intense confusion continued here over the fate of the kidnapped US journalist.

Two conflicting reports spawned this confusion. One report said the police had recovered the journalist. The second contradicted it, saying that a special team probing the kidnapping had received a message from the captors that he had been killed and his body had been disposed of somewhere in Lahore. The source of the message could not immediately be known.

Some five senior officers of the Punjab police were contacted but none of them confirmed any of the information. “We are just assisting the special team,” one of them said and added that he had no such information. Cell phones of all members of the team remained closed.

However, it was confirmed that police searched graveyards. The team assisted by the Lahore police squads spent some two hours in the Miani Sahib graveyard to search Daniel Pearl. “Yes, there was an unusual movement of the police force here from 8:30pm to 10pm,” a resident of the area told Dawn by phone late night. But sources said that other graveyards like in cantonment, Model Town and Sadar had no such movement.

On the other hand, police kept on searching Ahmad Sheikh Omar, a member of the banned militant group Jaish Mohammad, who is believed to be the most important character of the kidnapping.

Three members of the same organisation arrested from Karachi a couple of days ago had told investigators that he had provided them the picture and the contents of the first e-mail message sent to US authorities and the Wall Street Journal of Daniel Pearl. This reporter visited the house of Omar on Mohni Road. A large contingent of police had surrounded it and its nearby localities, denying anybody to go ahead.