FAISALABAD, Feb 2: Terrorists involved in 56 bomb blast incidents that occurred during the last four years across the province are yet to be traced.

A senior police officer on the condition of anonymity told Dawn here on Sunday the Punjab police had succeeded in finding the clue to masterminds of only 13 such incidents out of 69 that occurred between January 1999 and November 2002.

He said 97 people were killed while properties worth millions of rupees were damaged during the period.

Special teams comprising senior police officers and functionaries of intelligence agencies failed to make any major breakthrough in this regard.

Most of the cases were traced luckily as police arrested 20 ‘terrorists’ from different parts of the country in an operation launched against them during the years 2000 and 2002.

He said the incidents were reported in Lahore, Rawalpindi, Sialkot, Dera Ghazi Khan, Lodhran, Sheikhupura, Jhelum, Kasur, Okara, Gujranwala, Faisalabad, Bahawalnagar, Gujrat, Sahiwal, Bhakkar, Pakpattan and Attock. However, not even a single terrorist was rounded up from these districts immediately after the sabotage activities.

It may be mentioned that none of the police officials was proceeded under disciplinary laws for their failure to find out persons involved in subversion activities.

Another police source said that immediately after the incidents in Attock, Rawalpindi, Bhakkar, Sahiwal, Gujrat, Pakpattan and Lahore, the then district police chiefs had announced that the accused involved in bomb blasts would be arrested shortly.

He said a special cell had been constituted in the provincial police headquarters to make a breakthrough in tracing the terrorists implicated in blast incidents. The cell was also being assisted by various federal sensitive agencies, he added.

GP accounts system: A new system for the regulation of G.P. fund accounts of the government employees is being introduced in the province.

This was stated by Punjab Accountant-General Wazir Ahmad Qureshi on Sunday. He was speaking at the inaugural ceremony of the GP Fund Pass Book Scheme here.

Under the new system, G.P Fund Passbooks would be issued to the account holders.

He said that the GP fund passbook contains particulars of a government servant, record of deductions made on monthly and yearly basis etc which would be verified once a year by the district accounts officer concerned.

He said that now the government servants would carry their passbooks with them on their new stations of postings. They would not have to exert for the transfer of G.P fund from one station to another, as was the practice in the past. The passbooks would bear a universal G.P fund number which would not change with change of station of posting.

He claimed that because of irregular maintenance of G.P fund accounts, some officials of the education department and the district accounts office had embezzled Rs6.2 million from the G.P. fund accounts of the government employees.

Five employees of the district accounts office, involved in the embezzlement, had been sacked but the education department has yet to take any action against the accused.