 Police Thursday arrested a criminal, calling himself Imam Mehdi, along with his 25 accomplices after a shootout in eastern Punjab province that killed one and wounded three others, said police.| An hour-long shootout. One deader. Three winged. A bus full of hostages, and mass arrests. A good time was had by all. |
| Except the dead guy, of course. |
The Inspector General and Senior Superintendent Police (SSP) of Faisalabad city, about 250 kilometers South of Islamabad, were on routine patrol when some unknown gangsters assaulted them with rifles, a local police official Mubashir Nazir told KUNA. Upon retaliation fire, which lasted for about an hour, the gangsters tried to escape, said Nazir. He said Police chased them and when they reached the Motorway, leading toward Islamabad, they stopped a bus on gunpoint and took about 40 passengers as hostages. Immediately after the incident, police called in more force from nearby cities and were negotiating the gangsters. The leader of the gangsters group, Shehbaz, called himself Immam Mehdi, and threatened police of dire consequences if they tried to arrest him or his accomplices. He demanded to call President General Pervez Musharraf in Faislabad and that he wanted to talk to the President directly.| "He's waiting for my call." |
After negotiations of two and half hour, he said, Shehbaz gangster released all the bus passengers. There was an exchange of fire that killed one gangster and critically wounded three others, he said, adding that Police succeeded in arresting all 26 gangsters along with their leader. Rana Zahid Tauseef, the city mayor, said they were interrogating them and determining their identities as well as from where they got hold of weapons in such a huge quantity. According to Muslims faith, a cleric, Immam Mehdi, will come before the doomsday. Many people earlier had been claiming to be Immam Mehdi, but very few of them get up a posse and go about assulting the cops. |