LAHORE, Jan 15: The Punjab police on Wednesday claimed to have solved the mystery of the murder of MPA Chaudhry Mohammad Farooq and his five aides.

Punjab IGP Masud Shah and Gujranwala DIG Malik Mohammad Iqbal made the announcement at a press conference in the Civil Secretariat.

Former provincial law minister Chaudhry Farooq, his four relatives and a bodyguard were shot dead at Serai Alamgir in Jhelum on Dec 29.

The IGP said leads and evidence collected from the scene of the crime had resulted in the arrest of all the culprits. Political rivals of the MPA had hired some assassins to get the job done, Mr Shah maintained.

The DIG said a man, Mohammad Ishtiaq, was arrested on the basis of crime scene evidence. “He proved to be a hard nut to crack and told us only that he had been assigned the task of disposing of the car used by the assassins.”

Mr Iqbal said the car, recovered from Azad Kashmir, turned out to be a snatched one when the police record was checked. Two gunmen had driven it away on Nov 22, he added. “Its owner, Waqar Gul, was taken into custody and he told the police that he had purchased the car from a local politician, Raja Masood Sarwar.”

The DIG said informers told police that Raja had once been defeated in a local body election by an uncle of the MPA and harboured a grudge against him.

He added that Raja was arrested and he confessed to have hired assassins for the crime. He told the police that he had assigned the job to a criminal named Tasawar Hussain alias Jhebo.

Police were unable to find any clue as to the whereabouts of Jhebo until they unearthed another murder plot during further investigation of the case, the DIG said, adding that it was learnt that Raja’s family also wanted to kill Chaudhry Mohammad Arshad, the brother of the late MPA and a complainant in the case.

“Some other family members of Raja were rounded up and they told the police that his nephew, Maqsood Mahmood, had left for Peshawar to hand over advance payment to the assassin for another killing.”

Mr Iqbal said a raid was conducted at the place in Peshawar where, according to the family members, the nephew and the hired assassin were due to meet.

Raja’s nephew as well as Jhebo and his six accomplices, Irfan Ali, Aurangzeb alias Rangi, Mohammad Altaf, Shaukat Ali, Gulfam alias Gullo and Sarwar alias Sro, were rounded up in the raid, he added. Six of them, he said, turned out to be proclaimed offenders (POs). The DIG said six people were murdered by Jhebo and his accomplices on Oct 1, 2001, in Gujranwala division. He was also wanted in an attack on a former MPA, Sarwar Bhoj, which claimed the lives of two bodyguards of Mr Bhoj, he added. “Jhebo also kidnapped people for ransom.”

The other POs, Mr Iqbal said, were wanted by the Punjab police in connection with murders, robberies and car-snatching incidents. They worked as hired assassins, he added.

Replying to questions, the IGP said a campaign had been launched to round up all the POs in the province.

Mr Shah said he did not care if crime graph was going up as he did not use statistics to analyse the crime situation. “Free registration is bound to show an increase in crime,” he said, adding that he paid more attention to understanding the nature of crime and controlling it rather than hiding it by refusing to register crimes.