Intelligence agencies have arrested a man believed to be Ilyas Siddiqi, an activist of the now defunct Al Zulfikar who the police recorded as having died in the early 1980s in Karachi, sources told Daily Times on Thursday. The sources said Mr Siddiqi was a suspect in the murder of Zahoorul Hasan Bhopali, a close aide of Gen Ziaul Haq, and the chairman of the Tehrik-e-Istehkam-e-Pakistan Council. According to the sources, activists of Al Zulfikar, a militant group founded by Mir Murtaza Bhutto against the Zia regime, led by Mr Siddiqi gunned down Bhopali in the Lines Area, Karachi. An unidentified man was also killed in the incident and police believed that this was Mr Siddiqi, hit by ‘friendly fire’. The day after, Mr Siddiqi’s father received the body and had a funeral at his Nazimabad residence.
"Maw! Who the hell is this? Why do we have to bury him?"
"Sssshhh! Shuddup, Paw!" |
Mr Siddiqi, very much alive, fled to Afghanistan where he stayed until the Soviet forces withdrew from that country. Mr Siddiqi returned to Pakistan and ended up in Lahore, where he was finally rumbled at the local cloth market he worked at. A cloth merchant from Karachi, who happened to be Mr Siddiqi’s neighbour in the 1980s, was in Lahore and saw him working at the cloth market. The merchant walked up to him and hugged him, but Mr Siddiqi denied ever even having lived in Karachi. This aroused the suspicion of his employer, who asked a friend to find out the truth about his worker. His friend, with the help of intelligence agencies, found out that he is the Ilyas Siddiqi who ‘died’ over two decades ago. Intelligence agents raided his house and arrested him on Monday. |