KARACHI, June 28: Police are groping in the dark to find a clue to the killers of Mufti Ateequr Rehman and Maulana Irshadul Haq, who were gunned down on Burnes Road on Thursday night.

The investigation wing of the police had picked up a number of suspects after they recorded the statement of the 10-year-old only eyewitness Ammad, son of Mufti Ateeq. Ammad survived the attack. With his help, the police prepared a sketch of one of the possible suspects.

Sources said that the police had not been relying on the sketch as in most of the cases, the sketches did not resemble with the suspects.

The investigation police, however, conducted several raids in haphazard at the residences of those affiliated or had once been affiliated with different jihadi outfits and picked them for investigation.

SSP Investigation Zone-1 Manzoor Mughal, who also holds the charge of the DIG Investigation, could not be reached despite repeated attempts.

Since the investigation wing was separated from operations branch of police, it was given a task to concentrate on solving cases.

Besides, a number of cases of murder and robberies, the Investigation Zone-1 have miserably failed to make a breakthrough in the case of Aslam Mujahid, who was shot dead in Korangi on May 30.

The Investigation Zone-1 has also failed to solve the high-profile murder cases of those killed last year including Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai, Abdullah Murad, Munawwar Suhrawardi, Mufti Jamil Ahmed, and Maulana Isarul Qasmi.

The police had prepared sketches of the suspects in almost all the cases and picked up a number of people on suspicion of their involvement in the murders. However, the sources said, all those picked up were let off subsequently because no link with any of the murders could be established.

Police sources said that the old cases were in pending and their files were kept in lockers. They said that a new file was opened along with the new murder case and all concentration of the investigation police was diverted on the new case. They said that investigation police had been showing poor performance.

They said that the investigation was a technical job and it required expertise. The police hierarchy and the government had never given importance to appoint educated, skilled, and expert officials in investigation wing to improve its performance.

The sources observed that those posted in investigation wing just applied traditional methods to solve a case instead of using scientific methods and seldom could they get success.