LAHORE: The Crimes Investigation Agency (CIA) claimed on Wednesday to have arrested four suspects and busted an illegal gateway exchange being used to make threatening calls to Punjab Safe City Authority for releasing CCTV footage of the Charing Cross blast that led to arrest of the alleged facilitator of the attack.

CIA Superintendent of Police (SP) Tariq Mastoi addressing a press conference at Qila Gujjar Singh Investigation Headquarters said that they unearthed the exchange when an unidentified caller threatened the authority with an attack similar to the one on The Mall for recording the Feb 13 blast and providing its footage to law enforcement agencies that helped identify and arrest the attack’s alleged facilitator.

Fifteen people, including two senior police officials, had lost their lives in the suicide attack.

Authority threatened for providing Mall blast footage to LEAs

The SP said that a CIA Kotwali team working on the case first gathered details of the number used to make the calls and then raided its owner’s house. The team was astonished to find out that the man whose thumb impression was used to activate the subscriber identity module (SIM) card was living abroad for five years, he added.

He said they later unearthed the gateway exchange used to make the calls to the Punjab Safe City Authority and also recovered the SIM card from the possession of the person running the exchange. The arrested suspects were identified as Muqeet Ijaz, Muhammad Sajid, Muhammad Naveed and Muhammad Bilal. The official said they were conducting raids to arrest other accomplices of the suspects.

They also recovered 10 gateway satellites, three modems, three biometric devices, hundreds of SIMs of various service providers, 50 fingerprint papers, 10 receivers and five laptops from their possession. The SP said the suspects had set up gateway exchanges across the province, including Lahore and Gujranwala, adding that the suspects also hacked fingerprint data of the National Database and Registration Authority to use thumb impressions to activate SIMs.

He said the suspects would be handed over to the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) for further investigation, adding that a case had been registered under sections 34, 35, ¾ of Electronic Transaction Act 2006 at Sattukatla police station.

While answering questions, the SP said that the suspects were not directly involved in facilitating the terrorists but it was revealed during investigation that most of the terrorists were using illegal gateway exchanges for communication.

He added that they were also trying to establish the identity of the terrorist who threatened the Punjab Safe City Authority.

Published in Dawn, April 27th, 2017