KARACHI, June 8: Neither the Jamshed Town police officer nor the video filmmaker could identify the exact spot where the blast occurred in Nishtar Park on April 11.
Assistant sub-inspector Iftikhar Husain Baloch told the tribunal investigating the blast that he was standing behind the stage on its left, and when he heard the loud sound, he fell unconscious. He regained consciousness after a few minutes and rushed to the park control room to inform town police officer Mohammad Tahir Naveed that he had carried out his assignment (filmmaking). The TPO asked him to go straight to the Civil Hospital and he went there with his camera.
The ASI said he took a few shots at the hospital but could not stay their for long because of disturbance created by the enraged public. He started making a video film when the main procession was passing by Tibet Centre on M.A. Jinnah Road and entered the park along with it. He was in plainclothes and shot the movie on foot or on board vehicles. He said he was asked to prepare the movie by the TPO as he could arrange and operate a camera.
He was making the movie when the blast occurred ‘but from a different angle’. He did not know whether his camera remained on or went out of order after the blast. The congregationists were turning their heads for ‘salam’ when the blast occurred. The movie was screened in the courtroom of Justice Rahmat Hussain Jafferi of the Sindh High Court, who constitutes the tribunal, for a while but the screening was put off to Friday for want of a bigger television screen.
Capt (retired) Tahir Naveed resumed his testimony earlier but could not explain why the permission given by the DIG (operations) for the ARY-QTV ‘naatia mushaira’ was on the night between April 10 and April 11 came to his knowledge belatedly. He also could not clarify his statement that one of the three major processions that formed the gathering at Nishtar Park entered the Jamshed Town at 7.30pm. The proceedings were held up for 40 minutes for production of the the TPO’s receipt and despatch register. Plainclothes policemen from the special and political branches might have been posted in the park but they were not under his control nor were mentioned in the contingency plan.
The TPO said there was no specific allocation for closed-circuit television apparatus in the funds provided to him for the town. He was sitting in the control room, about 100 yards from the stage when he heard the sound of the blast. The blast occurred ‘in front of the stage’ but he did not know whether the explosive device went off in the open space or in the congregation. The namazis were saying their ‘sunnat’ prayers and were holding their bodies in different postures. That stage was well lit and when he rushed to the scene after a few minutes, he found blood-soaked spots and clothes on the ground and shoes littered all around. Except for a front portion of the matting, the stage was intact.
Utter confusion, the TPO said, prevailed after the blast. The angry crowd shouted slogans and the police could not face their wrath. “Because of the lack of civic sense,” the TPO said when asked why there was resentment against the police when it was not involved in the blast. Illiterate and uneducated people, in particular, were not aware of their own rights and the rights of their fellow beings. People were not at times prepared to abide by the law and rules while police were there to enforce rules. The force was saddled with great responsibilities for meagre salaries, particularly at the lower level.
Asked by Advocate Javed Ahmed Chattari, counsel for Shah Sirajul Haq Qadri of the Pakistan Sunni Movement, whether there was a joint organizing committee for the Eid-i-Milad celebrations, he said he knew the organizers of the various events separately and was not aware of a joint panel. “I was not competent to call them,” he said when asked why he failed to invite the MNAs, MPAs or town nazims to the stakeholders’ meeting of April 2.
The TPO replied in the negative when asked by the tribunal whether any policeman died or suffered any injury in the blast. The SHO of Soldier Bazaar police station is likely to record his statement after the screening of the video film on Friday.