KARACHI, Jan 26: A crucial eyewitness account by a policeman wounded in the motorcycle bomb explosion in Malir on Tuesday got a police investigation into the latest terrorist strike off the ground on Wednesday, officials said. They added that while no terrorist outfit had accepted responsibility for the Malir blast, immediate suspicion fell on the militant group said to have been previously involved in deadly attacks on mourners.

Four people — including three policemen and a passerby — were killed and four others including a couple of policemen were wounded in the blast on Sharea Faisal on Tuesday evening.

Speaking to Dawn, SP CID Mazhar Mashwani quoted the wounded policeman, ASI Manzoor Bhutto, as saying that some policemen were on a patrol between the Malir Halt and Malir 15 when buses carrying mourners from the main Chehlum procession were returning.

He said it was during the patrol that the policemen noticed a motorcycle fitted with a courier box and a suspicious-looking man lurking around it.

By the time the police reached there, the suspect had crossed over the road and managed to flee despite an attempt made by the police to stop him, he added.

The wounded ASI Bhutto told his seniors that the two-wheeler blew up as the policemen examined it.

He felt certain that he could identify the suspect who had fled, the SP said.

However, the police had yet to prepare, let alone release, a sketch of the suspect by Wednesday night.

Explosives

The investigators said that around three-and-a-half kilograms of explosive was used in the blast.

They drew a parallel between the modus operandi of the terrorists behind the twin blasts last year — first on a bus carrying mourners to the main Chehlum procession and then at the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre — and that of those masterminding the Malir blast on Tuesday.

“The explosives were laced with nuts and bolts and not with ball bearings,” SP CID Mazhar Mashwani told Dawn. He recalled that in the last year twin Chehlum blasts, too, nuts and bolts had been used in the explosives instead of ball bearings.

According to investigation agencies, Jundullah has the pattern of employing a planted explosive device instead of the prevalent trend of suicide attacks being followed by the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, who claimed responsibility for the Lahore attack that left 11 dead.

Following the Ashura and Chehlum blasts, police arrested four Jundullah suspects last year. However, six armed men got the four suspects freed from police custody after they attacked the security personnel with hand grenades in the city courts where they were brought for a hearing in the Ashura blast case in June 2010.

SP Mashwani said no remains or fragments of a detonator or a timer device had been found from the crime-scene so far.

He said the type of explosives used in the Malir blast seemed the same as those used in last year’s Chehlum blasts. However, he added, the type of explosives was yet to be determined as a forensic report was awaited.

Experts said that potassium chlorate was used in the last year blast which targeted a bus carrying mourners to the main Chehlum procession. Similarly, the same explosive was used earlier in the Ashura blast, they added.

While the investigators were taking a close look at the blast site to collect additional evidence on Wednesday, remains of Constable Kamran Qureshi, who died in the blast, were found across the railway tracks.

An officer associated with the investigation said that no effort had so far been made to determine the origin of the motorcycle used in the blast. Indeed the damaged parts of the two-wheeler were yet to be shifted from the Saudabad police station to the Sindh government’s forensic science laboratory.

FIR registered

The first information report of the Malir blast was registered at the Saudabad police station on Wednesday.

The police said that the case (FIR No 29/2011) had been registered on a complaint of wounded victim, ASI Manzoor Bhutto, under Sections 302 (premeditated murder), 324 (attempted murder), 427 (mischief causing damage to the amount of fifty rupees) of the Pakistan Penal Code. They said that Sections 3 and 4 of the Explosives Act and Section 7 of the Anti-Terrorism Act have also been incorporated in the FIR.

The complainant stated in the FIR that he could recognise the suspect if he saw him again. Thus, an unknown suspect had been named in the FIR, the police said.