RAWALPINDI - Regional Police Officer (RPO) Akhter Umar Hayat Lalayka on Thursday claimed to have arrested two target killers involved in many incidents of sectarian killings in the city.
Both target killers were arrested during a raid in Lane 9 Gulistan Colony, the area of Police Station (PS) Civil Lines. A 9 mm pistol, a 32 bore revolver with 16 bullets were recovered from the possession of the accused, he said.
He said those arrested were involved in target killings of Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat (ASWJ) activists.
They had also a hit list of 20 ulema and leaders of different schools of thought.
Addressing a press conference at his office, RPO said that on a tip-off that three suspects were standing in Lane 9 and could commit a crime, a special police team led by SHO PS Civil Line Asghar Ali Goraya conducted raid and arrested two suspects. However, their accomplice managed to escape from the scene on Honda 125 motorcycle and police were raiding at different places to arrest him.
The arrested suspects were shifted to police station where they during interrogation confessed of murdering ASWJ Mufti Imran Farooqi and injuring his relative in a shot-and-drive attack on 21/5/2014 in Tulsa.
 Seeing police party, they fleeing killers also left an applied for motorcycle behind which was taken into custody by police, Lalayka added.
RPO said the detainees, during the course of investigation, also revealed that they had a target list of 20 ulema belonging to ASWJ, Deoband and Sipah-e-Sahaba in Punjab and Rawalpindi.
He said the weapons recovered by police would be verified by forensic experts. They also used these weapons in recent activities of sectarian killings in the city. Nonetheless, it was yet to be determined whether the arrested target killers belonged to any specific group and who was behind them.
With the arrest of these two killers, Umar said, a considerable decrease would be seen in target killings. Both accused were sent for identification parade, he said.
RPO said that security was put on high alert following military operation ‘Zarb-e-Azb’ against militants in North Waziristan Agency (NWA) to avoid any untoward incident.
“There are terrorism threats in Rawalpindi, Islamabad and Attock on occasion of 27th Ramazan, Jumatul Wida and Eidul Fitr but police are fully capable and ready to tackle any kind of threat”.
Police have solved all the extortion cases and have brought the culprits to book whereas investigation in Savor Food case was underway, he said.
Umar said police had started collecting and maintaining data of tenants residing at rented houses as well as IDPs coming from NWA.
“So far, data of 26,000 people have been collected”.
Similarly, police were conducting search operations to purge the city of anti-social elements. The press conference was attended by SP Rawal Town Karamat Ullah Malik and SP Investigation Haroon Joya.