The three alleged weapons suppliers claimed to have been arrested from the Shershah area on Monday by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of Sindh police are actually students of the University of Balochistan, who were picked up from the varsity campus on January 18.
CID Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Chaudhry Aslam had claimed that the three suspects, identified as Abdul Ghaffar Bugti, Shamsullah Bugti and Safiullah Bugti, were associated with the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) and had arrived in Karachi to deliver weapons to the gangsters of Lyari and the banned Peoples Amn Committee (PAC).
The police had also claimed that nine rockets and 550 live rounds were recovered from the possession of the alleged smugglers, all from the Bugti clan.
Moreover, Aslam had alleged that the suspects had delivered weapons and ammunition to the PAC six times in the past.
However, the Voice For Baloch Missing Persons (VFBMP), an organisation striving for the recovery of missing persons belonging to the Balochistan province, has dismissed the allegations.
According to VFBMP, the names of these men were there in the list of 60 missing persons which was submitted to the Supreme Court in its last hearing on missing persons held in Quetta last week.
The three suspects claimed to have been arrested by the police during the Lyari operation were actually whisked away from University of Balochistan on January 18 earlier this year, the organisation’s chairman stated on Tuesday.
Abdul Ghaffar, Shamsullah and Safiullah were listed as missing in the beginning of this year and their relatives had filed applications in the Supreme Court, which is being heard by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, according to the VFBMP.
Its chairman was of the view that the arrest of the three Bugti men was a drama as the chief justice has directed the law enforcement agencies to recover the Baloch missing persons, including the three arrested, and produce them before the bench.
According to the VFBMP, instead of producing the three missing persons before the Supreme Court, the authorities concerned had given their custody to the CID officer, the Lyari operation in-charge, who then presented them as weapons smugglers before the media.
The organisation has appealed to the Chief Justice of Pakistan to take serious notice of the handing over of these three Baloch students to the Karachi police on fabricated charges of illicit arms dealing.
Well-placed sources told Pakistan Today that in order to legitimise the operation in Lyari, the Karachi police staged this drama and these three suspects were handed over to the CID police by the security agencies, as they are under pressure of producing the Baloch missing persons in the Supreme Court.
