RAWALPINDI: One of the two unidentified bodies recovered from the debris of Punjab home minister Shuja Khanzada’s political office in the Shadi Khan village of Attock after the suicide attack has been identified as that of his former servant.

The other unidentified body is believed to be that of the suicide bomber.

Police and intelligence sources close to the investigation told Dawn that one of the two bodies recovered from the debris of the minister’s Dera was that of Sher Zaman. They said Zaman dissociate himself from Shuja Khanzada a month ago and started working with a landlord.

With only one body remaining unidentified, possibility of second suicide bomber ruled out

However, the wife of Zaman could not identify the body when she was brought to the mortuary of the District Headquarters Hospital Rawalpindi on Wednesday. But the police were planning to get a DNA test on the body to strengthen their claim that the unknown victim was Zaman.

“It has been confirmed that one of the two unclaimed bodies is that of Sher Zaman and the other (body parts) are of the bomber,” a senior security official close to the investigation told Dawn.

He said except the two bodies, all the victims of the terrorist attack had been identified. There is no doubt that the terrorist attack was carried out by one suicide bomber, he added.

Earlier, it was presumed that the body that was yet to be claimed by anyone could be that of the second bomber.

“Efforts are being made to restructure the face of the bomber but chances of that are slim as his face is smashed,” the senior security official added.

The investigators are also trying to trace the ‘facilitator’ and ‘handler’ of the bomber. As many as 18 people, including Shuja Khanzada, were killed and scores of others injured in the attack.

The security sources said the preliminary investigation showed that the bomber was carrying more than 10 kilogrammes of high-intensity explosive.

According to the investigators, the suicide bomber entered the minister’s Dera posing as a complainant and reached close to him and then detonated the explosive. The home minister was receiving public complaints at a meeting in his home village when the suicide bomber targeted him.

A police official said Shuja Khanzada had not asked the Attock police for any police squad. However, he was provided an escort after he entered the limits of the Attock district.

On the other hand, the investigators are focusing on the geo-fencing to trace all the phone calls made in the surrounding areas at the time of the attack. The data of the phone calls of security officials deployed in the minister’s Dera was also being collected.

Published in Dawn, August 21st, 2015

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