KARACHI, July 4: Sunni leaders were threatened with bloodbath and the provincial home minister and police were informed of the threats, Pakistan Sunni Movement chairman Shah Sirajul Haq Qadri told the Nishtar Park blast inquiry tribunal on Tuesday.
He said Anjuman-i-Naujawanan-i-Islam president Tariq Mahboob phoned him on the night between April 10 and 11 that there was talk of bloodshed on April 11 and he immediately informed Home Minister Rauf Siddiqui. The minister assured him that all security measures had been taken and that police were on high alert. He phoned the minister after the blast and told him that the worst fears had come true. Mr Siddiqui too was worried and told him that he was coming to the park.
Mufti Munir Shakir group of the federally-administered tribal areas in the NWFP, Siraj Qadri said, had earlier threatened Mohammad Altaf Qadri, permit holder of the Nishtar Park meeting, that “we will blast you off with a bomb”. Altaf Qadri, who is the complainant in the April 11 blast case, received a call from a member of the Mufti group that his Madressah would also be destroyed. A complaint was registered with the Jamshed Town police with the phone number from which the call was made. He submitted a cassette containing speeches by Mufti Munir Shakir in Pushtu dubbing the Sunni Barelvi sect ‘kafir’ and ‘mushrik’. The tribunal asked its registrar to have the speeches translated in Urdu.
Siraj Qadri, who is the son of Shah Turabul Haq Qadri, Amir of Jamaat Ahle Sunnat and permit holder for the main Eid-i-Milad procession, said the Jamaat held a Namoos-i-Risalat Conference on Jan 1 to condemn the blasphemous utterances of the Mufti and counter his venomous propaganda. Hundreds of Ulema participated in the conference and denounced the Mufti. Hafiz Sanaullah of a so-called religious organization, held a meeting at Annu Bhai Park, Nazimabad, on the 10th of Rabiul Awwal, a couple of days before Eid-i-Milad, to announce that he would not allow distortion of the tenets of Islam by those celebrating the occasion. He resorted to wall chalking against the Barelvi sect. The home minister and the police were informed of the threats.
The witness said certain religious sects and organizations had become jealous of the growing popularity of the alliance of Sunni organizations which had successfully launched a campaign against the sacrilegious caricatures, first published by a Danish journal. The April 11 blast was a target killing of Sunni leaders and there was a conspiracy behind it.
To start with, he said, the main procession was obstructed several times by the rally taken out by Maulana Asghar Dars. Though he is not a permit holder himself, he has changed the route of his rally from Chundrigar Road to M A Jinnah Road. Earlier it proceeded from Merewhether Tower to Arambagh through Chundrigar Road, but now it passes through Jinnah Road and turns from Tibet Centre to reach Aram Bagh.
The main procession, the witness said, comes out from the Memon Masjid on Jinnah Road and proceeds to Nishtar Park so as to reach there at the time of Asr. When Maulana Dars’s rally blocked the main procession, Shah Turab sent Haji Hanif Billo and Mohammad Aslam to ask the Maulana to clear the way. Both the emissaries were roughed up and returned with torn clothes. The procession was delayed and reached Nishtar Park at dusk where violent death was awaiting its leaders.
He said the obstruction created by the Dars rally was brought up at a meeting called by the home minister on April 9 to ensure peace during Eid-i-Milad observance. Maulana Dars assured the minister and the meeting that the rally would be taken out early at its appointed time but later went back on his assurance and caused an ‘unprecedented’ delay in the arrival of the main procession at Nishtar Park.
Replying to queries by the tribunal and his counsel, Javaid Ahmed Chhatari, Shah Siraj said the Pakistani Sunni Movement was launched in 1994 to protect and promote the interests of Sunnis and to save their mosques and madrassas from usurpation.
The tribunal, which consists of Justice Rahmat Hussain Jafferi of the Sindh High Court, earlier allowed the release of dismantled stage and other articles to Quran TV-ARY from a SITE godown. The Nishtar Park stage used for the Eid-i-Milad function on April 11 was erected by the QTV for its Naat competition on April 10 and later given over to the organizers of the public meeting. It was dismantled on May 12, a month after the blast, and taken to SITE. ARY programmes director Khalil Warsi and SITE town police officer Shah Zaman earlier recorded their statements.
