VEHARI, July 23: Three of the eight alleged members of a banned militant outfit involved in the Bahawalpur church firing incident have been arrested by the Vehari police.

This was claimed by Multan range DIG Iftikhar Ahmad Chaudhry at a press conference at the Vehari SP’s office here on Tuesday.

He said police raided their hideout in Mailsi on a tip off and arrested them.

The DIG did not give the time when the raid was conducted and the exact location from where they were arrested.

He said one Manzoor Husain alias Mumtaz was arrested from Mailsi. During investigation he gave the addresses of their hideouts. A raid was conducted on the information provided by him and his accomplices Ahsan Muaviya of Haroonabad and Talha alias Nadeem of Bahawalpur were arrested, he added.

DIG Chaudhry said their fourth accomplice, Kashif of Gujranwala, was already in police custody in connection with the murder of former minister Siddiq Kanju. Their accomplice Shakil Anwar had been killed in Bahawalpur in a police encounter. Three others, Suleman of Bahawalpur, Wasim of Layyah and Zafar Iqbal of Jhang, were still at large, he added.

He said four Kalashnikovs and eight magazines were recovered from their possession.

The DIG claimed that they belonged to the banned Lashkar-i-Jhangvi. Later, they established Lashkar-i-Umar after developing differences with Lashkar-i-Jhangvi chief Riaz Basra.

He said the accused opened fire on worshippers in church on October 28, 2001, and killed 16 of them, including Constable Aslam. After the incident, they faxed messages to newspapers’ offices accepting the responsibility of killings.

He claimed that they were also involved in a Rs3 million dacoity in Multan, besides car and motorcycle snatchings and robberies.

The DIG said some important figures of Vehari were on their hit list. They included Vehari district Nazim Mumtaz Khichi, politicians Sardar Khan Khichi and Arshad Ghalvi.

All the accused — Manzoor, Ahsan, Kashif and Talha — were also produced before newsmen. They confessed to their involvement in all the incidents, specially the church incident.

Accused Manzoor told Dawn that he and his accomplices got religious education from various seminaries of south Punjab. They joined Sipah-i-Sahaba in 1995 and played active role in enrolment and fund raising for this organization.

He said later he joined the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi and got training in Jihadi camps in Afghanistan and also took part in the Afghan Jihad.

A heavy police contingent along with other agencies’ personnel were deployed around the SP’s office.