I am surprised to hear the official story of the attack on the residence of Chaudhry Aslam, the Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Crime Investigation Department (CID). It says that Taliban has claimed the responsibility of the attack on the Senior COP’s home and that he (Ch. Aslam) has taken out many fighters of Taliban hence TTP is targeting him. If we look over the profile of Ch. Aslam, the picture shows otherwise.
Like always, they have started changing their claims. First claim about the blast was suicidal but next day, it is being aired that the attack was not suicidal rather it is a remotely detonated blast. It again enliven the claim of Dr. Zulfiqar Mirza that horrible weapons and ammunition has been dumped in the Karachi by MQM-A during Pervez Musharraf Era through their control over shipping ministry and port of Karachi.
The fact is that Ch. Aslam has always been a fierce force against the criminals in Karachi, particularly since his active contribution in clean-up operation against the Muttahida Qaumi Movement in the 1990s and he is one of the few surviving police officer who had taken part into this operation while majority of the police officers were killed. According to official figures, 941 police officers have been killed to date in revenge attacks, and 311 of them had been actively involved in the ‘Operation Cleanup’. The police were unable to investigate these cases, let alone make any arrests, due to political pressure.
According to the Journalist, Ahmed Noorani, a policeman, named Asif Rafiq, “who came forward to provide information to the police about killers of Geo TV reporter Wali Khan Babar in Karachi have been brutally and quietly murdered.” It is also reported that after the killing of those police officers who have taken part into the 1992 operation clean –up in Karachi has refused to take part in the ongoing operation clean – up by Rangers and other law enforcement agencies in Karachi.
Ch. Aslam is tagged as “hitman” for Pakistan Peoples Party and the has taken out many wanted criminals in Karachi as well as carried many high profile operations against the political workers cum criminals and terrorists in Karachi. His profile contains many names from MQM, including his promotion to deputy superintendent of police (DSP) in 1999 came after he caught Saulat Mirza, who was convicted of murdering the then managing director of KESC, Shahid Hamid. Saulat Mirza is related to MQM.
Shoaib Khan and Ibrahim Bholoo Story
In 2005, Ch. Aslam was promoted from DSP to superintendent of police after he arrested underworld don Shoaib Khan. Shoaib Khan ran a number of gambling dens in Karachi, a line he was familiar with, as his father Akhtar Ali Khan, was a satta operator and gambler in Liaquatabad. Even though Shoaib was in police custody, his gambling dens continued to operate in the city, with the biggest gambling den located in the Hockey Stadium. In the mid ’90s Shoaib started a gambling den in Dubai. It was in Dubai that Shoaib made contact with Dawood through their mutual passion for gambling. Both men became friends and Shoaib took over Dawood’s extortion operation in Karachi. Then in 1998, Shoaib allegedly murdered a Pakistani businessman, Irfan Goga, who had won a lot of money gambling in Shoaib’s den in Dubai. Irfan’s body was never recovered but his abandoned car was found in the parking lot in Dubai airport. Goga’s family accused Shoaib of the murder, but before warrants could be issued, Shoaib fled to Pakistan. Dawood also knew Irfan and reportedly when he questioned Shoaib about the killing, he told Dawood that he killed Irfan because he had been abusing Dawood, something Shoaib found impossible to accept. Shoaib soon acquired a reputation for not honoring his financial commitments both in his gambling operations and otherwise.
Haji Ibrahim, alias Bholoo, was a People’s Party worker and a good friend of Najeeb Ahmed, a top PSF activist, as well as other Peoples Party activists. In the early ’90s he left for South Africa, where he amassed a small fortune in drugs, hawala and smuggling. Then he met Shoaib in Dubai and became his business partner. Dawood Ibrahim too had extensive drug operations in South Africa. So it was inevitable that Bholoo joined hands with Dawood Ibrahim, serving as his agent in South Africa.
Bholoo was a known contract killer. His name shot into the limelight when the mutilated body of Karachi’s top bookie, Hanif Kodvavi alias Hanif Cadbury, was found in Johannesberg in 1999. Hanif had fled to South Africa after a dispute with Dawood over the payment of 800 million rupees of bet money, which Dawood apparently lost in the Sharjah Cup matches. Though Dawood and his men deny they have anything to do with Hanif Cadbury or his murder, Ibrahim Bholoo’s name has been associated with carrying out the contract killing of Hanif Cadbury in South Africa for Dawood Ibrahim.
Hostilities between Bholoo and Shoaib surfaced , when Shoaib asked Bholoo to arrange hit men to eliminate Dawood Ibrahim’s arch enemy, Chota Rajan. Till the Mumbai blasts, Chota Rajan was Dawood’s right hand man. After the blasts, however, he defected and formed his own group, and ganged up with RAW to hit the business interests of his former Godfather.
Insiders claim that Bholoo, who in the past had carried out a number of contract killings for Dawood Ibrahim, immediately arranged for three activists of the now defunct Al-Zulfikar organisation to eliminate Chota Rajan. The three who were wanted in several criminal cases in Pakistan, were assured of protection and a generous pay-off if they carried out the hit on Rajan. The team of assassins from Pakistan, backed by some former Pakistani undercover agents, left for Bangkok to trace and eliminate Dawood’s top foe. The Pakistani hit team succeeded in tracking down Chota Rajan who was then staying in the apartment of one of his trusted friends in a fashionable Bangkok district. The team attacked in a style similar to blockbuster Indian movies. Armed with automatic weapons and wearing ties and jackets the hit team reached the upmarket apartment building carrying a cake, giving the impression to the security at the gate that they had come to celebrate Rajan’s birthday. The hit team burst into the apartment and against the underworld rule of never killing women and children, fired at the wife of Rajan’s top hitman, Rohit Verma. When she tried to save her husband, both Rohit and his wife were killed. Rajan locked himself in the bathroom but was injured when the team sprayed the door with bullets. Rajan managed to slip out of the bathroom window, and hid himself in a nearby garbage dump till the police came to his rescue. He later slipped out from a Bangkok hospital after bribing the police officers who had been deputed to guard him and disappeared.
When the team returned to Karachi, Shoaib antagonized Bholoo by refusing to honour his commitment to pay the three Al-Zulfikar assassins their fee. Bholoo, who could not refuse to pay his former party comrades, paid them from his own pocket.
On January 8, Ibrahim Bholoo, visited the Defence residence of Shoaib Khan to settle another monetary dispute involving 700,000 dollars and was never seen again. Senior police officers suspect that Bholoo is already dead, though they have yet to find his remains.
Since then, the Bholoo group had been gunning for Shoaib who, moving under heavy security, consistently managed to escape the Bholoo boys. Two controversial Karachi police officials, SHO Anwar Khan and Chaudhry Aslam, have also allegedly joined the Bholoo group, to help them get Shoaib. While in South Africa, Bholoo was a key informant for the Karachi police on the activities of MQM activists taking refuge in South Africa. He was constantly feeding information to SHO Anwar Khan and Chaudhry Aslam, who were in the forefront of the army crackdown against the MQM. “When Bholoo disappeared, we thought it was our moral and ethical responsibility to help out his family,” said Anwar Khan. Bholoo’s family had several meetings with Dawood Ibrahim to seek his help in convincing Shoaib to divulge Bholoo’s whereabouts.
Shoaib, who still had the support of Dawood Ibrahim, continued to escape arrest. Then on February 21, 2001, the situation changed. There was a shooting incident on the premises of the City Courts, where armed guards from the two rival groups exchanged fire. Shoaib, who had applied for a temporary bail before arrest warrant in Bholoo’s kidnapping case from Sukkur, had come to the court to get his bail confirmed. He was escorted by ranger personnel and several armed men. Bholoo’s men were waiting. Both the rangers as well as Shoaib’s armed guards fired at Bholoo’s supporters, who they feared might force Shoaib’s arrest after lawyers told Shoaib that his bail may not be confirmed. The seven ranger personnel led by Major Abdul Majeed of Janbaz Force in Thatta and Major Tariq Hameed of Karachi, faced a court martial. They were reported to be regular visitors at mujra performances at Shoaib’s den. On the day of the shooting at the City Court, the team of rangers apparently left their headquarters on some pretext to accompany Shoaib for his protection.
The incident forced the government to finally intervene and undercover agents approached Dawood and asked him to stop backing Shoaib. It worked and on June 14, Shoaib surrendered himself to the authorities. “Dawood was told that Karachi was not Mumbai. We told him to stop supporting Shoaib because he had killed an innocent man,” said an inside source.
On January 27, 2005, underworld don Shoaib Khan, who was arrested in Lahore a month earlier, died mysteriously in the Central Prison of Karachi. The jail authorities claimed that Shoaib Khan had suffered a heart attack early in the morning. He was taken to the National Institute of Cardio-Vascular Diseases (NICVD) by 3am where he was pronounced dead. Later, at around 5:30am his body was shifted to the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre.
Liyari Task Force
As an SP, Aslam Khan headed the Lyari Task Force and went head on to clamp down on the mafia run by Lyari gangsters Rehman Dakait and Arshad Pappu. Dakait was eventually killed in an encounter by a police team headed by Aslam in 2010. Recently, Pakistan People’s Party’s ex-senior Minister and then Interior Minister of Sindh, Dr. Zulfiqar Mirza has confirmed in a TV Talk show that he ordered Rehman Baloch’s murder. As Interior Minister he was the Boss of Ch. Aslam and he used him to target the political activists and target killers in Karachi not the Taliban of Pakistan.
Ch. Aslam was informed of the attack a few weaks ago
The Interior Ministry had sent a letter three weeks ago warning the Sindh government of attacks on Chaudhry Aslam and at sensitive areas, The News reported. The letter warned of attacks in Karachi on the 18th and 19th of September, 2011 between 6 and 10 am. The letter was drafted following information received by the Interior Ministry from security agencies warning of terrorist attacks.
The letter which was sent on August 27 stated that suicide bombers were present in Karachi and were looking to target offices of security agencies, foreign consulate staff, religious locations and police officers who were tackling terrorism. The letter also mentioned Chaudhry Aslam and the names of other officials.
The Responsibility of Attack on Ch. Aslam’s house
Two reports by different news papers have different versions. One says that TTP Spokesperson has claimed the responsibility of the attacks by calling to Reuters from undisclosed location while other paper says they called The Associated Press. It generates many questions:
-
Why did they call the foreign media companies, why not Pakistani media?
-
What Ch. Aslam has to do with Taliban who had no significant proven presence in Karachi nor it is their battlefield except they carried targeting of very high value military targets of their terrorism mainly on the directions of “foreign powers”.
If we look over the list of blasts by TTP’s terrorist, it shows that they have used explosives weighing 1000 kgs at least to cause maximum horrible damage to their targets. This attack is not TTP’s style, rather it is something to do with on-going politics in Karachi. To my mind, it is a planned attack by political parties in Karachi to divert the public attention from the storm created by the press conference of Dr. Zulfiqar Mirza on August 28, 2011 against MQM and PPP. Clearly the attack has political motives. Ch. Aslam is the person who arrested the notorious MQM killer Ajmal Pahari and investigated him in his CID centre in Karachi.
It is the arrest of Ajmal Pahari that lead the law enforcement agencies to build the case against MQM –A and publicize it through the internet for the knowledge of the world, consequently making arrests of dozens of MQM – A criminals involved in the widespread violence in Karachi. The arrest of Ajmal Pahari by Ch. Aslam Khan practically opened the Pandora box against MQM – A. Karachi Saga is moving towards its ultimate end swiftly.
