Mobile phones worth millions of rupees snatched from courier company vehicle

KARACHI: Armed men on Sunday robbed a van of a courier company carrying mobile phones worth million of rupees. Police said the incident took place in the wee hours of Sunday when the robbers intercepted a vehicle of a private courier company and took the company’s staff in the vehicle hostage. They drove the vehicle to a place where another vehicle was parked. The robbers loaded the new vehicle with the mobile phones in the courier company’s vehicle and fled.

Following the incident, the police registered a case against unidentified persons and initiated investigations.

According to Ferozabad SP Aleena Rajper, police registered the case on the complaint of a company official. She added that CCTV footage of the incident's surroundings was being obtained.

The officer said the company authorities had not specified the stolen items and the extent of damage in the case, and they verbally stated that the worth of stolen items ranged between Rs10 million and Rs70 million.

SP Rajper said that since the company had multiple owners, they were currently in the process of individually checking how many mobile phones each owner had and their respective value.

Only after this assessment, the total number of mobile phones and their overall value would be determined, she said.

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Dead suspect in Lemo Goth blast declared ‘suicide bomber’

By Faraz Khan

KARACHI: Police on Sunday declared that the suspect who had allegedly exploded a hand grenade just hours before the February 8 general elections in the Gulshan-e-Iqbal neighbourhood was a “suicide bomber”.

SHO Abdus Sattar of the Mubina Town police station lodged an FIR of the incident at the Counter Terrorism Department (CTD), declaring the suspect a “suicide bomber”.

“I claim that the suicide bomber Farooq Mirani, son of Abdur Rehman Mirani, who was killed on the spot, carried out a suicide bombing with the intention of terrorism, resulting in the death of and injuries to people through the use of unknown facilitators.”

The explosion had occurred in Haji Lemo Goth on the night of February 7, resulting in the deaths of three people: a minor boy, a teenage girl and the suspected bomber.

The case registered at the CTD includes charges of murder, attempted murder, the Explosives Act and the Anti-Terrorism Act. The suspected bomber who was killed and his unknown facilitators were nominated in the case.

Investigation is under way to ascertain how and from where Mirani had acquired the grenade. The complainant claimed that the suspect had carried out the suicide attack on the instructions of unknown facilitators, and that the losses incurred in the attack come under murder and terrorism.

Experts said the FIR seems peculiar and unusual because it has never been reported that someone carried out a suicide bombing using a hand grenade. Additionally, they pointed out, it is necessary to determine the target of the assailant.

“The FIR doesn’t seem to depict a clear case of suicide bombing nor does it indicate a specific target, so it appears to be a case of mishandling by the suspect, leading to an accidental explosion,” said an expert.

“Such an FIR can potentially damage the case, and it doesn’t seem plausible that someone would attack a target near their own home. Typically, individuals don’t engage in such activities near their residences. Certainly the attack must’ve been aimed at an election camp or some other location at a distance.”

When The News contacted senior counterterrorism officer Raja Umer Khattab of the CTD regarding this matter, he said Mirani was the son of a police officer and he had been arrested some two years ago in connection with grenade/cracker attack cases involving Rangers and other personnel.

Khattab said Farooq Mirani was accompanied by a Sohail Mirani, who also hailed from Larkana and was associated with Sindhi separatist groups. He said that around 15 grenades had been recovered from Sohail, so there might have been more grenades that remained unrecovered.

The officer said that it is possible that Farooq became more radicalised while in jail, and it is also possible that Sohail shared the location of more hand grenades while they were incarcerated together.

Khattab said that it seems plausible that the grenade in question could be the one Sohail had informed Farooq about. Moreover, both are sons of sub-inspectors, he pointed out. Another suspect involved in the Chinatown restaurant case is also said to be the son of a sub-inspector, he added.