KARACHI, Sept 26: Police claimed on Friday to have arrested three activists of a banned religious group and seized arms and ammunition from them in North Karachi.

The police said Hamid, Hafiz Saeed and Hafizullah were arrested in a raid at Usmania Park, Sector 15-A/4, North Karachi.

However, the rangers had issued a press release on Sept 22, stating that they had arrested three activists of the banned Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, Hamid, Saeed and Faizullah, during raids at different places.

The press release reads: “Pakistan rangers (Sindh) on an information picked up three terrorists of the banned Lashkar-i- Jhangvi, Faizullah, Saeedullah, and Hamid. They were wanted in a number of cases. The field security wing raided different places and picked them up on Sept 21.”

The rangers officials said that the arrested activists were handed over to the Police Investigation-I, Zone-I (Saddar). The arrested people were allegedly involved in incidents of terrorism and other criminal activities. According to the rangers, three TT pistols and some detonators were seized from the suspects.

However, the police showed the recovery of three TT pistols and 12 parcel bombs from the same arrested people, who had been booked in FIRs No.199, 200, 201, and 202/2003 at the Shadman police post.

SHO Amjad Kiyani of the Shadman police post, who claimed to have arrested the suspects, was not present at his office and had switched off his mobile phone.

Nazimabad Town Police Officer SSP Sultan Ali Khuwaja told Dawn that he was on leave and had resumed his duty on Friday. “The suspects were arrested on Thursday and the FIRs were registered on the same day,” he said.

Asked whether the rangers had handed the suspects over to the police or the police had arrested them, Mr Khuwaja said: “Rangers do not have the authority to make arrests.” However, he did not elaborate.

He said he had to find out the details of the case. “I have to look into the FIRs to know whether or not the activists had been handed over to the police,” he said.

Sources said the rangers had picked the suspects in different areas in North Nazimabad and handed them over to Investigation-I. As the case was of Investigation-II, the police took three days to decide as to which place should the arrests be shown from.

After the decision, the suspects were handed over to the North Nazimabad police, where the arms and parcel bombs, which had not been seized from them actually, were shown as recovered, the sources claimed.

The sources in police said the suspects were interrogated in police custody and they had told the investigators that the rangers had picked them up at different places some 16 months back and not six days ago.