HYDERABAD: Police conducted a night-long search operation in different areas of the city ahead of Yaum-i-Ali, falling on Monday, focusing on private board and lodging hotels and guest houses located around the railway station and suspected places in Amani Shah Colony of Latifabad Unit-12.

Some suspects were picked up from during the search in guest houses near the station, police said, adding that receipt books pertaining donations for seminaries were seized from them.

It was learnt that some of the held suspects representing certain seminaries managed by the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) were let off following intervention by a senior party leader, Maulana Taj Mohammad Nahiyoon. The places focused in the search operation are located within the vicinity of Qadam Gah Maula Ali.

“We had reports that a banned militant organisation has been active for a few days in the city and that’s why the search operation is being carried out as preventive measures ahead of Yaum-i-Ali,” said Hyderabad DIG Khadim Rind. “It has nothing to do with the two recent high-profile cases, qawwal Amjad Sabri’s targeted killing and the kidnapping of Sindh High Court chief justice’s son Barrister Awais Shah, in Karachi,” he said.

The DIG said that search operations had been carried out and arrests made in connection with the two high-profile cases so far only in Jamshoro and Dadu districts of the in the interior of Sindh.

Speaking about the Friday night action in Hyderabad, Cantonment ASP Suhaee Talpur, who led the raiding team, said that 15 suspects were picked up but some of them were let off on personal bond offered by a leader of a politico-religious party. She said the freed suspects possessed receipt books and intended to collect donations for their seminaries. No one had come forward to lodge an FIR against them, she added.

Speaking to Dawn, she said that there was a general alert for possible sectarian violence on the eve or occasion of Yaum-i-Ali and a threat received in this regard prompted the police to conduct an extensive search operation. “A search operation was conducted in Amani Shah Colony but the activity was then restricted to intensified patrolling in the area due to paucity of time,” she said.

Meanwhile, sources within the Hyderabad police said on Saturday that raids were carried out on some hideouts, known for keeping kidnap victims in the past, in the Dhabeji area of Thatta district as part of a greater operation currently under way to locate Advocate Shah as well as the suspects involved in his kidnapping and those involved in the killing of Amjad Sabri. The sources said no arrests were made during the raids.

Police sources said that Hyderabad police face problems for detection of case relating to kidnapping in absence of GSM (global system for mobile) locators for Hyderabad police as well that help trace cellular phone availability that is being used by kidnappers.

Currently, there are only two locators, one in Karachi and the other in Sukkur. Hyderabad police usually borrows it from Sukkur or Karachi. But now it is likely to be provided to Hyderabad police also. A trained policeman is required to carry and operate it.

Published in Dawn, June 26th, 2016