GUJRAT: The police claim to have arrested a militant leader who was involved in killing two religious figures after kidnapping them for ransom a few years ago.

The arrested man, Hafiz Wajid of Gujrat’s Kotla Arab Ali Khan area, had been a leader of the defunct Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (Asmatullah Moaviya group), the police claimed.

The suspect, along with his five accomplices one of who was already in the Gujrat jail in connection with the targeted killing cases, had kidnapped homeopath Dr Naqi Husain Shah in the Lalamusa Saddar police precinct in October 2009 and demanded a ransom of Rs10 million from his family.

The militants killed the kidnapped man and dumped his body which is yet to be discovered as the file of the case had been closed for being an “untraced case”.

Hafiz Wajid also kidnapped Mubarak Ahmad, an Ahmadi, and his servant Sikandar Mahmood in the Gojra Saddar police area of Toba Tek Singh district in 2010. They later freed the servant and demanded Rs20 million for the release of Mubarak who was later brutally killed and his body was dumped in Gujrat.

The same group had kidnapped 10-year-old Afaq Ahmad from Kunjah, Gujrat in 2011 but left the boy after meeting with an accident while speeding away.

District Police Officer Rai Ijaz Ahmad confirmed the arrest of the key member of the outlawed outfit and said a co-accused in the case, Afzal Fauji, was already in Gujrat jail. The police had interrogated both the suspects who, the DPO said, made some revelations which could lead to arrest of other members of the group.

Police sources said the complainants in all the kidnap for ransom cases had been told about the murder of the kidnapped men but the locations where the suspects had dumped the bodies were yet to be identified.

The families of the kidnapped men, they said, hoped against hope that they might be alive somewhere in the tribal belt of North Waziristan Agency prior to the confessional statement by the suspect that he had killed both the men.

The suspect had once been the head of the TTP (Asmatullah group) in Karachi and was working on organising the group. The Gujrat police on Tuesday presented him to the court of an area magistrate where the suspect confessed to the killings.

He was handed over to the police for a day’s physical remand and is scheduled to be presented before the Gujranwala Anti-Terrorism Court on Wednesday for seeking further remand.

Published in Dawn, November 19th, 2014