KARACHI: After exhuming bodies of 10 militants who were killed in the June 2014 Karachi airport from the Edhi Foundation’s graveyard for identification of one of them, the investigators are now looking for their 11th dead aide who, it emerged, was buried in an Orangi Town graveyard after being killed in the assault.

The fresh findings came during the course of investigation that not only one of those buried in the Mowach Goth graveyard of the charity organisation as unidentified attackers, was a Karachiite, but also another militant named Hisham was with them.

“But it emerged that Hisham was not buried in the Mowach Goth graveyard,” said a senior officer. “Hisham was also shot in the gun battle with the security forces. But somehow, he managed to escape in injured condition and died later or died there but his body was taken away by some of his aides and he was buried in an Orangi Town graveyard.”

So, he said, efforts were on to determine his grave in that particular graveyard of the densely-populated neighbourhood. He said it was not an easy task to determine the exact grave of the militant with hundreds of such structures in the graveyard.

“However, we are very close to achieving the desired results,” he said. “Once the grave of Hisham is determined, we would move in line with the defined laws to exhume the body for samples to conduct DNA matching which would lead to his identity and family links.”

New facts about the June 2014 attack started unfolding after the recent arrest of two Lashkar-i-Jhangvi (Naeem Bukhari group) militants — Ishaq alias Bobby and Asim alias Capri. It emerged that at least two of the 10 militants were not Central Asian and they belonged to Karachi.

During the course of interrogation Ishaq Bobby had told the police investigators that his brother-in-law, Majid, and his friend, Hisham, were killed in the airport attack. For identification of Majid, the health officials under the supervision of a judicial magistrate and police had exhumed 10 bodies of the unidentified attackers on Nov 22 from the Edhi Foundation’s graveyard in Mowach Goth.

“It was found that Hisham was also a resident of Orangi Town like Majid and he was buried in his area graveyard,” said the officer. “We have traced all other relevant facts and collected all necessary evidence, which are required for his DNA matching. We only need samples of his body and for that we are close to determining his grave in the Orangi Town graveyard.”

Twenty-six people were killed and 18 others were wounded in the attack on the Haj terminal of Karachi airport on June 8, 2014. The 10 militants, who were armed with automatic weapons, grenades and a rocket launcher, were later killed in an hours-long gun battle with security forces. The outlawed Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan had claimed responsibility for the deadly attack.

“Once the grave is found, the same procedure will be adopted for the identification of Hisham as was done for Majid in the Mowach Goth graveyard,” said a health official. “The samples of the clavicle bone, teeth, nails and hair from the body would be collected, which would be initially examined here and then would be sent to Islamabad for final DNA matching that takes a week or so.”

Published in Dawn, December 9th, 2016