Lahore: Security agencies in Pakistan arrested two suspects involved in the car bomb blast outside the house of the 2008 Mumbai terror attack mastermind and chief of the banned Jamat-ud-Dawa (JuD) Hafiz Saeed, an official said. The crime investigation department (CTD) has arrested two suspects, one of them a Christian, who had a connection with the sale and purchase of the car used for the blast, a CTD official said.
The official did not disclose the identity of the suspects. However, sources named one of the arrested as David Peter. Intelligence agencies have arrested a man from the Lahore airport on the suspicion of his involvement in the blast, Geo News reported. Quoting police sources, the report said the man was asked to get off a Karachi-bound flight a few minutes before departure. He was taken to an undisclosed location for further investigation, the report said. “We are getting a lead from the arrested persons to the main culprits,” the CTD official said, adding that different teams have been formed to probe the matter.
The arrests came after the security agencies conducted raids across different cities of Punjab in connection with the blast. An FIR has been registered against “unknown terrorists” under terrorism and other charges, said police. Three persons were killed and 21 others injured when the car bomb exploded outside Saeed’s residence in Lahore, resulting in serious injuries to some police officers guarding his house. The windows and walls of Saeed’s house were damaged from the impact of the blast. No group has claimed responsibility for the blast. Meanwhile, condemning the attack, PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has warned that Pakistan could see an increase in such attacks due to the “flawed Afghan policy” of the current government led by PM Imran Khan.
Police cordoned off Hafiz Saeed’s house after the blast. Saeed is currently serving his term in a Lahore jail in a terror-financing case, but he was never charged in connection with the Mumbai attacks. Pakistani officials had reportedly told a Pakistani Anti-Terrorism Court in 2012 that the terrorists who attacked and killed over 166 innocent people in Mumbai on November 26, 2008 belonged to the Saeed-led LeT and that they had been trained at various cities in Pakistan.
The key planner of the Mumbai carnage, Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, was an undertrial at Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi but was released due to "lack of evidence" on April 9, 2015 on the orders of the Lahore high court.
