LAHORE, Jan 15: All the arrested activists of the four outlawed religious militant groups would remain in custody for three months under an administrative order issued by the Punjab government on Tuesday.

Sources said that the order was issued under Section 3 of the Maintenance of Public Order. Under the law, the government could detain the activists for one to three months.

The additional secretary home handed over lists of the activists arrested in all districts of the province to the AIG operations, asking him to dispatch the order to all police heads.

Following the order, all the arrested activists would be sent to jail on Thursday. Since the launch of the operation, none of the arrested men was produced before any court of law.

The sources said that the decision to detain the activists for three months was taken at a meeting held for hours late Monday night at the Civil Secretariat.

The sources said that the meeting discussed three options to justify the detention of the activists. The first option was to detain them under Section 16 of the Maintenance of Public Order. But it was dismissed for the reason that the government had to trace cases registered against the held activists in the past. The second reason for dismissing the first option was that most of the held men had no cases against them.

The second option was to book the activists under the amended Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997. For this, the government again required to have a ground like cases amounting to terrorism against the detained men. This too was dismissed.

Finally the government decided to detain them for three months. The sources believed that actually the government took time to do some homework in this regard.

Meanwhile, law enforcement agencies rounded up 30 more activists of the outlawed militant groups in the Punjab on Tuesday.

However, the law enforcement agencies could not make any big breakthrough as far as the arrest of the leadership and important men of the outlawed groups was concerned.