SUKKUR: Sukkur police on Tuesday claimed to have arrested the prime suspect in the Nov 29, 2014 assassination of the then Sindh secretary general of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl Dr Khalid Mahmood Soomro.

Sukkur SSP Tanveer Hussain Tunio disclosed the arrest of the suspect, Lutufullah Jamali, in his messages to some journalists and later speaking to the media in his office on Tuesday.

The SSP said that acting upon a tip-off, 11 vehicles carrying a big police force crossed into Balochistan to conduct a raid on a hideout in Osta Mohammed. Jamali was found present there and the police arrested him, he said, without giving other details about the raid.

He said that five suspects involved in the assassination had already been arrested.

Dr Soomro was gunned down while he was saying Fajr prayers in a mosque next to his seminary in the SITE area of Sukkur on Nov 29, 2014.

While the killer(s) remained at large for weeks after the attack, the JUI-F held a series of rallies and demonstrations in Sindh and other parts of the country for their arrest. Police picked up and interrogated scores of suspects and let off most of them until they short-listed five of them and undertook an extensive investigation into the case in December 2014.

One of the five suspects, Mohammed Hanif Bhutto, a resident of Sachal Colony in Larkana, was then declared the mastermind of the assassination. Two others, Altaf Hussain Jamali and his brother Darya Khan Jamali, were stated to be residents of Jacobabad while Sarang Ali and Mushtaq Ali were said to be residents of Qambar and Lakhi Ghulam Shah, respectively.

Police believed that more criminals were involved in the assassination plot but in an FIR (82/2014) lodged by the victim’s son, Rashid Mehmood Soomro, a few days after the incident, only four assailants were nominated.

Sukkur range DIG Dr Saen Rakhio Mirani headed the investigation team. He had concluded that the attack was carried out on a sectarian basis.

All five suspects were remanded in judicial custody.

With the arrest of Lutufullah Jamali, who is being described as the ‘prime suspect’ of the case, from Balochistan, more aspects of the high-profile case have come to light. The DIG-led investigation team would have to determine whether the alleged mastermind was Hanif Bhutto of Larkana or the just arrested prime suspect Jamali of Osta Mohammed.

The police and Rangers were also focusing on the alleged network of sectarian forces in Jacobabad, Qambar and Shikarpur (where a suicide bomber had targeted an imambargah killing over 50 people almost a month after Dr Soomro’s assassination) while chasing sectarian elements into the bordering Balochistan province.

Published in Dawn, May 27th, 2015

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