Govt responsible for Mawach Goth bombing, says Sirajul Haq

KARACHI: Over a week has passed since the grenade attack on a mini-truck on Independence Day that killed 13 members of an extended family. Hundreds of people and political personalities have visited Sherpao Colony in Landhi to offer their condolences and express their sympathies with the relatives of the victims.

Jamaat-e-Islami chief Sirajul Haq and the party’s Karachi leadership visited Sherpao Colony on Sunday to offer their condolences to Awami National Party (ANP) leader Farman Ali and JI leader Mairaj Muhammad Khan, who lost six women and seven children of their family in the terror attack that occurred in Mawach Goth on August 14.

The JI chief said that the attack on the innocent women and children on Independence Day was an attack on Pakistan and the August 14 celebrations.

He said that the JI would raise the issue in the parliament and hold protests to press the government and law enforcement agencies to bring the criminals involved in the Mawach Goth tragedy to justice.

“The incident must be investigated on a priority basis and the perpetrators brought to light. Sons and daughters of six months and 12 years were martyred,” said Haq.

“Maybe if the prime minister had considered these sons and daughters as his sons and daughters, he would have come here. But he does not consider them his own,” he lamented.

“A government that can’t establish peace has no right to be in power. If the government can’t ensure justice in such an incident, then it is responsible for it.”

JI Karachi chief Hafiz Naeemur Rehman assured the family that the party was with them and would continue their efforts to ensure justice for them. “Political parties have played their due part. Now it’s the prime responsibility of the government and the state to prevent such incidents.”

Farman Ali, the head of the affected family, said that they had been told by the authorities that the investigation was still under way, and that the perpetrators were still unidentified.

“The government and law enforcement agencies believe that over the passage of time, people would forget the terror attack and everything would fall behind the scenes. But we will not stay silent.”

Leaders of various political parties attended an all-party conference to express solidarity with the families of the victims of the Mawach Goth terror attack, and to evolve a strategy to press the government and law enforcement agencies to arrest the perpetrators and unmask the network involved in the incident.The conference was held at the ANP’s District Malir office, where the participants agreed that poor security arrangements by the government and law enforcement agencies on Independence Day, despite threats, had led to the loss of so many human lives in the Mawach Goth attack.

They said that despite the passage of more than a week, no positive progress had been made by the security agencies in their search for the perpetrators, which was a complete failure and incompetency of the government and its law enforcement authorities.

They also agreed that if the federal and provincial authorities did not arrest the perpetrators, the political parties would jointly devise a future course of action, including protest rallies and a shutter-down strike.

The participants included the ANP’s Kachkol Khan and Saeed Khan, the Pakistan Peoples Party’s Shah Jahan Khan, the JI’s Muhammad Islam and Muhammad Nawaz Khan, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz’s Feroz Khan, the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl’s Maulana Ehsanullah Tikravi, the Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat’s Maulana Mahiuddin Shah, the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan’s Hafiz Idrees Awan and the victims’ family members.

Seven women and six children had lost their lives and several others had suffered burn injuries in the grenade attack in the Mawach Goth locality on the night of August 14.

The family had been returning to Landhi’s Sherpao Colony from Pareshan Chowk after attending a post-nuptial ritual in the Pashto tradition called Wama (seventh).On August 7 Farman Ali had hosted the wedding reception of his younger brother in an Eidgah ground located in front of his home. And since August 15, after the victims’ burials, he has been receiving condolences from people in the same ground.

Originally from the Swat valley in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, Ali’s family has been residing in Karachi for the past several decades. He was the ANP’s central council worker, while Mairaj Muhammad Khan, who also lost his wife and children in the attack, was a former Dawood Chowrangi union committee chairman and a JI district leader.