KARACHI, Aug 15: Police have arrested a group of 21 members of the Jamaat-i-Islami and Islami Jamiat Talaba for allegedly attempting to destroy peace in Karachi. This was stated by Capital City Police Officer Tariq Jamil during a press conference here on Monday.

Referring to his earlier press conference on Saturday in which the arrest of four people — Abu Bakr, Tanveer Malik, Noman, and Junaid Ansari -– was announced, he said the arrested men disclosed during investigation that they had formed a group of 21 members of the JI and IJT to cause breach of peace. The police are making efforts to arrest their accomplices, he added.

SP Anti-Violence Crime Cell Farooq Awan said four pistols had been recovered from the suspects who confessed to having a huge quantity of weapons.

The police are conducting raids but the weapons have not yet been recovered.

He said Ismail Abu Saeed, their ringleader, and Jawed Farooqi of the IJT, second-in-command, were being interrogated.

During interrogation, the suspects revealed that the group had been operating on their own, he added.

Meanwhile, Mohammad Hussain Mehenti, Abdus Sattar Afghani and Laiq Khan, MMA’s MNAs from Karachi, have described the claims made by the CCPO as “a pack of lies”.

They said the students being branded terrorists had been arrested from their homes two weeks ago. When the police could not “extract a confessional statement of its liking” it accused them of being involved in hatching a terror plot, they added.

They said the police officer was playing a dangerous game on the bidding of an organization responsible for the murder of policemen.