Police claim Jauhar knifeman caught in Mandi Bahauddin

The man believed to be responsible for terrorising female citizens with knife attacks in Karachi’s Gulistan-e-Jauhar locality since late last month has finally been caught in central Punjab’s Mandi Bahauddin city.

In a statement released on Sunday, the Karachi police said the prime suspect of the Jauhar knife attacks, identified as Waseem, was arrested with the help of the Sahiwal police.

The local law enforcement agency said the suspect was also involved in similar attacks on women in Sahiwal in 2015, adding that the Sahiwal police had earlier arrested him, but after being released on bail, he had disappeared and was later declared an absconder by the court.

Investigations by law enforcers and other agencies, including Sindh’s Intelligence Bureau, led the police to believe that Waseem was also behind the Jauhar attacks because he had been spotted in Karachi, following which a team was sent to Punjab to hunt and catch the suspect.

The Karachi police said that since Waseem was declared an absconder by a court in Punjab and he was under investigation there for similar attacks, all legal formalities, such as seeking permission from the authorities, would need to be completed before the suspect could be brought to the metropolis.

On Friday the administrative judge of the anti-terrorism courts had remanded an alleged accomplice of the knifeman until October 18. Police said the man, identified as Shehzad, was a close aide of Waseem.

The investigating officer told the judge that the two men were friends and that they hailed from the same village in Sahiwal. The IO said Shehzad had told the police that Waseem had arrived in Karachi around a month ago.

Shehzad provided cover to Waseem during the knife attacks and also conducted reconnaissance for him, and when Shehzad was arrested on Thursday, a knife was found in his possession, added the IO.

Earlier, the Karachi police had been detaining suspects who bore a resemblance to the knifeman. The man caught on the CCTV footage of the attacks seemed to be an ectomorph (a thin person).

Gulshan-e-Iqbal SP Ghulam Murtaza Bhutto said the police had released pictures of the attacker, and that he had directed the local law enforcers to detain anyone who looked like him. SP Bhutto said the police had also asked the maintenance committees of the apartment buildings in the affected localities to keep an eye out for the suspect.

Meanwhile, an official of the country’s top security agency had suspected the involvement of the Ansarul Sharia Pakistan (ASP) in the knife attacks on Jauhar’s female citizens. He believed that the eight-member ASP was following in the footsteps of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan to divert the focus of the investigators cracking down on them. However, the police had disagreed with the view.