KARACHI: Bodies of two of the eight suspected Ansarul Sharia militants killed in an alleged encounter were received by their relatives on Monday.

In a joint raid carried out by the Counter-Terrorism Department and Rangers in Baldia Town, eight militants, including the chief of the newly formed militant outfit, were killed in the early hours of Sunday.

The law enforcers claimed that they were involved in an assassination bid on Leader of the Opposition in the Sindh Assembly Khwaja Izharul Hasan as well as targeted killing of retired and serving officials of the law enforcement agencies.

The eight bodies were shifted to the Edhi morgue, Sohrab Goth, after completion of medico-legal formalities at the Civil Hospital Karachi on Sunday morning.

Fighters hailed from educated, middle-class families, police say

On Monday, relatives of two deceased — Hafiz Mohammad Saeed Jamal and Mohammad Arsalan Ali Baig — came forward and received their bodies from the Edhi morgue for burial, said an Edhi official.

Hafiz Jamal was a resident of Gulistan-i-Jauhar’s Block-2, while Baig lived in North Nazimabad’s Block-N, the official said.

However, their families appeared reluctant when Dawn approached them.

‘Educated militants’

Hafiz Jamal had acquired his engineering degree from the NED University of Engineering and Technology and was working in a private firm.

“All the killed militants belonged to Karachi’s educated and middle-class families,” DIG CTD Amir Farooqi told Dawn.

He said one of the dead was a mechanical engineer and another one worked in K-Electric.

He recalled that their accomplice, Hassaan Nazeer, who was killed during the Eid day attack on Khwaja Izhar, was also an engineering graduate from Sir Syed University and masters in telecommunication from NED University. He was working in the Dawood University of Engineering and Technology as lab engineer, he added.

He said that Ansarul Sharia had developed various sections such as training for militancy, motivating youths for militancy and spreading propaganda, etc. “These educated youths were mostly influenced by social media where such material existed.”

Global agenda

The DIG said that such educated persons were “different” from the militants of other outfits as they had a “global agenda”. He said that they all were inspired by Al Qaeda in the India Subcontinent (AQIS).

They had approached Abdullah Baloch to gain recognition as part of AQIS but they were not officially recognised as a franchise of the militant outfit, DIG Farooqi said.

He disclosed that Baloch lived in the Pak-Afghan border area and worked as an “intermediary” for militants and recruited youths for the AQIS.

He recalled that at one stage the convicted militants of the Safoora bus carnage, such as Saad Aziz, had also approached Baloch for the same purpose.

Another CTD official, Raja Umar Khattab, told Dawn that Dr Abdullah Hashmi, the chief of Ansarul Sharia, belonged to the banned Jaish-e-Mohammad but he was expelled from the organisation because of differences.

No other militant group was willing to “accept” him in its fold so he along with likeminded people in the JeM, such as Abdul Karim Sarosh, formed his own group.

Published in Dawn, October 24th, 2017