KARACHI: Police and Pakistan Rangers, Sindh, in separate actions arrested two suspects linked with the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-London and recovered arms and ammunition buried inside a park, according to officials.

“Bahadurabad police conducted a raid inside the Hill Park and recovered sophisticated arms buried there,” said SSP-East Azfar Mahesar.

This action was carried out on information provided by held suspect Naseem, alias Builder, who was detained in Bahadurabad after an ‘encounter’.

“He was an active member of the MQM-L,” added the officer.

The seized weapons included a long-range Russian sniper rifle, a silencer-fitted Kalashnikov and four pistols.

The sniper rifle was the ‘weapon’ of the army and it had the effective firing range of up to one kilometre, said the officer.

The suspect had been arrested in the past also by law enforcers in Orangi Town and subsequently five Kalashnikovs were recovered on his information at that time.

During the preliminary probe, Naseem, alias Builder, told investigators that when the MQM came into power in 2000s, he was released as his cases were quashed under the National Reconciliation Ordinance.

The MQM-L worker also ‘confessed’ to having killed Dr Mazahir Ali Qureshi in June 1998 at Rehmat Chowk in Orangi. SSP Mahesar claimed that the suspect had targeted the doctor on directions of the party leadership over ‘some issue’.

Separately, Rangers conducted an intelligence-based action in Gulshan-i-Iqbal near Disco Bakery and apprehended one suspect, Farooq, who was ‘associated with the MQM-London’, said the spokesperson, adding that he was involved in targeted killings, attempted murders and supply of illegal weapons to hitmen of the party to carry out killings.

He allegedly became a member of the party’s ‘hitmen team’ in Agra Taj sector in Lyari in 2007 and remained involved in violent clashes between the MQM and Lyari gang warfare elements from 2008 to 2012.

He had killed Lyari gangster Yusuf Ghanchi in 2013.

In the same year, Farooq along with his other accomplices gunned down eight persons, including passers-by, in Lyari.

Some of the deceased were members of Lyari gang warfare, said the Rangers spokesperson.

He had also remained involved in supply of illegal arms and ammunition to the party’s Agra Taj sector in Lyari, which the party’s members used during clashes with Lyari gangsters.

After launching of the operation in Karachi in 2013, the MQM activist had gone underground and during this period he had also stayed at the party headquarters Nine Zero in Azizabad and Juma Goth, claimed the paramilitary force official.

He was handed over to the police for further legal action along with seized arms, ammunition and other goods.

Published in Dawn, December 3rd, 2018