• Four suspects and alleged mastermind were killed years ago in encounters with police, US drone strikes in Afghanistan, says Raja Umar Khattab
• Court record shows case file remains dormant as suspects are listed as absconders

KARACHI: Sixteen years after the December 2009 bomb blast that ripped through the main Ashura procession on M.A. Jinnah Road, a senior law enforcement official has claimed that most of the perpetrators of the heinous crime were either killed in encounters with police or in drone strikes by the US forces in Afghanistan where they had taken refuge.

However, these suspects are still listed as absconders in the case file that remained dormant in an anti-terrorism court.

On December 28, 2009, over 45 people, including children, were killed when a bomb exploded in the central procession of Ashura in Karachi.

A month after the bomb blast, Special Investigation Unit (SIU) arrested four suspects — Murtaza, alias Shakil; Muhammad Shakeeb Farooqui; Wazir Mohammed and Murad Shah, said to be associated with the banned militant outfit Jundullah, for their alleged involvement in four cases pertaining to a series of attacks on Muharram processions in December 2009.

Later, the suspects had been brought to the City Courts in June 2010 in connection with a robbery case. After the hearing, the suspects were freed from police custody by their accomplices following an armed attack on the city courts premises and one of the four suspects, Murad Shah, was killed while fleeing.

Since then the case files were gathering dust and no one had been implicated in this case so far.

Speaking to Dawn, Counter Terrorism Department’s Raja Umar Khattab, who had arrested and interrogated the alleged facilitators of the Ashura bombing when he headed the SIU, claimed that the one of the key suspects — who escaped from police custody in 2010 — had been killed in an encounter in Orangi Town, while two other suspects Wazir and Farooqui, fled to Afghanistan, where they were also killed in a drone strike in 2016.

Elaborating further, Mr Khattab said the suspects’ families, who returned back to Pakistan had been interrogated and they disclosed and confirmed to him that both the suspects had been living near the Pak-Afghan border, where they were involved in assembling improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and later they were killed in a drone strike.

Speaking about the mastermind behind the Ashura blast, Mr Khattab said that the militant outfit Jundullah was founded by former Al Qaeda commander Hamza Jufi, alias Haji Mumtaz, in Waziristan. He added that Haji Mumtaz — who was also behind several major terrorist acts in Karachi — was also killed in a drone strike in Afghanistan in 2012.

He said that in 2009, a series of small explosions took place in various areas starting from the 6th of Muharram. However, the most devastating attack was carried out on the 10th of Muharram when explosives were allegedly planted inside a box, he added.

Mr Khattab stated that a few days after the blast, police apprehended several individuals from the jurisdiction of the Shahrah-i-Noor Jahan police station and recovered IEDs from their possession.

The evidence recovered from the suspects showed that the Ashura blast had been orchestrated by the banned outfit Jundullah, he added.

On the other hand, the Sindh prosecutor general’s office stated that as per last order issued by an anti-terrorism court, the case file of the 2009 Ashura bombing remain dormant, as the suspects are still listed as absconders.

According to the office, on October 10, 2010, the judge of the ATC-III issued non-bailable warrants for life time for arrest against the absconding suspects, and directed the case file be kept dormant.

Legal expert says that unless the investigating officer of the case or authority concerned submit a report before the court — such as statements from the legal heirs, death certificates, or any other proof confirming the suspects’ deaths — the case file will remain dormant.

Published in Dawn, July 6th, 2025