SUKKUR: Five suspects arrested for their alleged involvement in the Nov 29 assassination of Sindh general secretary of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) Dr Khalid Mehmood Soomro were produced in the Sukkur anti-terrorism court on Wednesday. The court remanded them in police custody for 15 days.

Dr Soomro was shot dead while he was saying the Fajr prayers in a mosque adjacent to his seminary in Gulshan-i-Iqbal, a locality in the Sukkur SITE area.

An FIR (82/2014) was lodged by the victim’s son, Rashid Mehmood Soomro, against four unidentified assailants at the SITE police station a few days later.

Sukkur-Larkana range DIG Dr Sain Rakhio Mirani along with Sukkur SSP Tanveer Hussain Tunio held a press conference at his office on Wednesday to claim that the suspects had confessed to the crime.

They said that the complainant of the case and some witnesses were also present when an identification parade was held in the court. The DIG said that a complete charge-sheet of the case would be submitted in the court soon.

DIG Mirani headed the team that investigated the high-profile case. He told the media that the initial investigation suggested that Dr Soomro had been targeted on a sectarian basis.

He said that one of the five suspects, Mohammad Hanif Bhutto, a resident of Sachal Colony in Larkana, masterminded the assassination. He identified his alleged accomplices as Altaf Hussain Jamali and his brother Darya Khan Jamali, Sarang Ali and Mushtaq Ali, residents of Jacobabad, Qambar and Lakhi Ghulam Shah, respectively.

He said that a white car had been seized from the suspects.

The suspects were also produced before journalists.

Meanwhile, JUI-F provincial leadership has withdrawn the strike call for Saturday (Dec 27) given to protest police failure to arrest killers of Dr Soomro.

Speaking at a press conference here on Wednesday, Maulana Saud Afzal Halejvi, along with other party colleagues and sons of Dr Soomro, said now when the suspects had been produced in court, the strike call was being withdrawn.

The JUI-F had planned to block roads leading to the Bhuttos’ mausoleum during a strike on Dec 27, the seventh death anniversary of the slain PPP chairperson Benazir Bhutto, to disrupt ceremonies scheduled for the occasion.

Published in Dawn, December 25th, 2014