LAHORE: Personnel of law enforcement agencies (LEAs) killed a suspected militant in an encounter in the Factory Area on Friday night and arrested his wife and an accomplice.

The Inter-Services Public Relations said the slain terrorist and his accomplices were planning an attack on an Easter-related ceremony in the city.

Two suicide vests and four grenades were seized from the house of the slain terrorist identified as Ali Tariq.

On Saturday, LEAs took a property dealer, Ayub, and Azeem, owner of the house, into custody for interrogation.

A spokesman for the Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) of police force claimed that a joint team of CTD and intelligence agency men carried out a search operation in the Punjab Housing Society on Friday at around 10pm.

The raiding team was attacked from one of the houses in the locality. The team fired back and an encounter ensued. When the firing stopped, the raiding team entered the house and found Ali Tariq, 32, dead.

He is said to be originally a resident of Bedian Road.

The spokesman said the team arrested a woman and a man but two to three accomplices of Tariq managed to escape by taking advantage of darkness.

According to sources in the CTD, the woman has been identified as Naureen Leghari, a student of the Liaquat University of Medical and Health Sciences in Jamshoro, Sindh. She had disappeared from there a few months ago ‘to join the militant Islamic State group’. Later she had come to Lahore and married Tariq.

The sources said that the woman had physically taken part in the encounter and had engaged police personnel for about an hour.

The CTD has registered a case under relevant sections of the Pakistan Penal Code and the Anti-Terrorism Act.

Published in Dawn, April 16th, 2017