LARKANA: Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Irfan Baloch on Wednesday warned that Daesh, as the militant Islamic State group is colloquially known, might hit back to avenge the loss of its ‘commander’ Abdullah Brohi along with his associate Abdul Hafeez Brohi in a raid carried out by the Shikarpur police in the Sindh-Balochistan border area a few days ago.

The dreaded international terrorist outfit would possibly hit targets in Shikarpur or some other area in Sindh, he apprehended while speaking at a press conference at the local press club on Wednesday.

He held out the assurance that security agencies were fully capable and alert to ward off any retaliatory attack.

Abdullah Brohi was declared the mastermind of several major terrorist attacks in Sindh including suicide bombing of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar shrine in Sehwan and central Imambargah of Shikarpur as well as bomb and gun attacks targeted against clerics, Sufis and other religious figures over the last few years. Several hundred people were killed and wounded in these attacks.

‘Senior police officers are vulnerable to terror attacks’

“Daesh terrorists have been operating from Afghanistan,” the DIG said, adding that “they have their links and tentacles in the Larkana police range”. He said police and other law enforcement agencies had been keeping a close vigil on these ‘links’ to pre-empt possible terror attacks.

Accompanied by Larkana SSP Masood Ahmed Bangash, the DIG also warned that senior police officers in Shikarpur were vulnerable to attacks that might be carried out to avenge the killing of Abdullah Brohi and Hafeez Brohi.

The DIG also disclosed that it was the proscribed Jeay Sindh Muttahida Mahaz (JSMM) that had tried to give the killing of [a nationalist activist] Irshad Ranj­hani in Karachi an ethnic colour when three Bajaur residents were gunned down in Naudero a few days later.

“JSMM itself has split into two groups with one faction being funded by India,” he claimed, adding that the bank accounts of the faction’s operatives were being che­c­ked by law enforcement agencies.

Criminal gangs

Speaking about the region comprising border areas of Rajanpur, Ghotki, Rahim Yar Khan and Sadiqabad, DIG Baloch said the region was sensitive in terms of heinous crime. He spoke of “honeytrap” and pointed out that people were being lured to such traps and kidnapped. “They [kidnappers] con­tact their victims on their mob­ile phone numbers and the callers speak to them in female voice. They are kidnapped when they go to meet the ‘woman’,” he said, adding that police were taking measures to bust such gangs of kidnappers. An operation against them would be launched soon, he added.

The DIG said that the border force that had been dormant till now had been reactivated to tighten the noose around these gangs. “A notorious dacoit, Buland Dahani, has been arrested today by the Jacobabad police,” he claimed.

Published in Dawn, March 7th, 2019