KARACHI: Police authorities investigating the Thursday bomb attack that killed CID SP Mohammad Aslam Khan and his two guards concluded that a suicide bomber had rammed his explosives-laden pickup into the slain police officer’s bulletproof SUV when his motorcade was passing through the Lyari Expressway.

Earlier, the police thought that it was a remote-controlled blast. However, the investigators found human remains at the scene of crime and a hospital examination showed that the pieces were of some unidentified person.

“Police brought several body pieces — two hands, one foot, broken parts of bones — on Thursday night to the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre,” said Police Surgeon Jalil Qadir on Friday. “The body parts of all three slain policemen were intact…the body parts belonged to the fourth person who died due to the blast.”

CID official Raja Umer Khattab said since the suspected suicide bomber’s both hands were intact, his fingerprints were sent to the National Database and Registration Authority for identification.

Later in the evening, Nadra informed the police that the fingerprints were matched with those of a 36-year-old man, Naeemullah, son of Rafiullah. He was a resident of the Pirabad area, according to the Nadra record.

SSP CID Niaz Ahmed Khoso confirmed to Dawn that the suicide bomber was identified as Naeemullah, who belonged to the banned Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan.

His father, the SSP said, ran a madressah in Pirabad. The elder brother of the alleged suicide bomber was murdered in Karachi after he returned from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

SSP Khoso, a member of an investigation team being led by DIG-CID Zafar Bukhari, said that it emerged that a Suzuki pickup was used in the bombing.

SSP-Investigation (East) Munir Ahmed Sheikh also corroborated these views and said: “Initial investigation suggested that the suicide bomber targeted SP Aslam’s vehicle.”

He said that the investigators also found one piece of an unknown vehicle. It was shown to a mechanic who said that it might belong to Suzuki pickup.

He said other pieces of the vehicle used in the suicide attack were not found since it was a huge blast and there was a possibility that the pieces of the vehicle might have been spread in a big area.

The officer in charge of the CID’s anti-terrorism unit, Raja Umer Khattab, said: “It was a vehicle-laden suicide attack on the vehicle of SP Aslam”.

He said that members of two separate investigation teams and Sindh police chief Shahid Nadim Baloch visited the crime-scene on Friday.

The official said that a piece found from the blast site suggested that it was of a vehicle between 600CC and 1000 CC.

He said that the bomb weighed around 100 kilograms.

He explained that the suicide bomber rammed his vehicle into SP Aslam’s SUV from the left side. The explosion was inside the vehicle, which contained ‘empty drums’, he added.

He said that the terrorists had carried out a proper recce of the route of the slain police officer and took advantage of a ‘weak point’, as the suicide bomber hit the SUV when it reached at an interchange.

SP Khan, better known as Chaudhry Aslam, along with his two guards — Sub-Inspector Mohammad Kamran and Constable Farhan Ahmed — was killed in a huge explosion on the Lyari Expressway near Essa Nagri within the jurisdiction of the PIB Colony police station.