MQM receives third bombshell in a week

ISLAMABAD: The Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) has received another shocker in the shape of an incriminating BBC report, the third bombshell in a span of only one week.The report talks about similar assertions regarding Indian training and funding of the MQM and its workers, which had been repeated by Pakistani officials more than once over the years.
As it always happens, allegations levelled by Pakistani authorities are generally not given much credence due to lack of credibility and for being politically motivated, but when the same are made by an international news outlet, they are attached a considerable importance and are regarded as reliable and actionable.
The timing of the BBC report is extremely significant. It was telecast just three weeks before MQM Chief Altaf Hussain appears before the British authorities in connection with his bail in the money laundering case.
The BBC report, dubbed by the MQM as a table story and media trial, rang alarming bells in Pakistan when it said that the MQM did not respond to the charge of receiving funding from India. Similar questions were asked from India, which also did not respond. A list of weapons was also found at a MQM owned property by UK authorities, and the arms were possibly to be used in Karachi.
On April 30 this year, senior police officer Rao Anwar presented before the reporters two alleged terrorists who he claimed belonged to the MQM. He charged that the MQM was actively working against Pakistan. “Key MQM leaders have connections with RAW. The arrested MQM workers received training from Indian spy agency RAW. I have evidence to support my claims, including their passports and their statements. MQM workers from every sector go to India for training via Bangkok.”
Anwar had said the MQM activists confessed and were ashamed for betraying their country. He recommended the MQM be banned in Pakistan. “They are not a political party but a terrorist group. I know I am on the MQM’s

hit-list.”
Because of intense pressure of the MQM, the Sindh government announced removal and suspension of Anwar for airing these allegations.
Only a day earlier, Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan gave a severe jolt to the MQM when he announced that the government has decided to give access to the Scotland Yard to Mohsin Ali, who was arrested by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) from Karachi a few weeks back on the charge of funding and facilitating the issuance of visas and admission in a UK college of two alleged killers of Dr Imran Farooq in London in September 2010.
By now, the FIA has surely got from the accused what it wanted and only then the government has taken the decision to allow the Scotland Yard to interrogate him. It has not been officially stated, but it is widely believed that Mohsin Ali had confessed that he arranged visas for the two accused and provided money to them for their visit to London.
The third bad news for the MQM came on June 18 when the Frontier Corps (FC) announced that it has apprehended two alleged assassins, Mohsin and Khalid Shamim, of Imran Farooq, who had flown to Pakistan via Sri Lanka after the murder. It was always stated that they were then picked up by a Pakistani intelligence agency from the Karachi airport.
However, the FC said that the two accused were crossing into Pakistan from Afghanistan when they were caught at the Chaman border. They have been handed over to the FIA.As the things are moving and the noose is being tightened around the MQM, it is likely that the British investigators will be permitted to question these two persons, who are the principal character in the murder of Imran Farooq.