Daily Times

KARACHI: The Counter Terrorism Department of Sindh police has scheduled a meeting with Vice Chancellors of universities regarding spreading of extremism in educational institutes, Daily Times has learnt.

Sanaullah Abbasi, CTD’s Assistant Inspector General (AIG) would chair the meeting at 4 pm on 12th July in his office at Karachi to discuss the ways to counter extremism on the campuses. Apart from the CTD officers, officials of the other Law Enforcement Agencies will also join the same meeting.

For the scheduled meeting, CTD has selected 10 universities and higher educational institutes of private and public sector across the metropolis to have a consultative meeting of its VCs and heads. Those educational institutes include University of Karachi, Hamdard University, National Institute of Computer and Emerging Sciences, Institute of Business Administration, Bahria University Karachi Campus, Federal Urdu University of Arts Science and Technology Karachi Campus, Jinnah University for Women, Khadim Ali Shah Bukhari Institute of Technology, Muhammad Ali Jinnah University Karachi, Iqra University Karachi Campus and Sir Syed University of Engineering and Technology.

CTD officials want to bring in the reasons of growing religious extremism on the campuses after the proven involvement of faculty members and students. “It is anticipated that faculty members who have completed their studies in European and Middle East countries are particularly hazardous for the forming of extremist outlaw organizations ; this is the reason of the meeting which has been called up”, one of the high-ranked responsible officer of CTD claimed.

He added that the LAEs have recently arrested suspected female militant Noreen Laghari who had disclosed that she was a student of Liaquat Medical College, Sindh and her father was a professor at Sindh University. She was to be used by ISIS as a suicide bomber on an attack which was expectedly to be conducted on a place of worship at Easter.

Similarly, on 13 May 2015, around 45 people had been killed and several injured after gunmen opened fire on a bus of the Ismaili community near Safoora Chowrangi and the place of incident was a few steps away from University of Karachi. After investigation the LAEs had arrested Saad Aziz, who was student of A level and the military court awarded him death sentence after his proven involvement in the Safoora Goth massacre.

In addition, in December 2015 CTD had arrested Adil Masood Butt, Professor of a private University who was allegedly involved in the fundraising of Al Quida and later he indicated, Khalid Yousaf, a well qualified person who did the role of facilitator in Safoora incident.

He further disclosed that Saad Aziz, Nooreen Laghari and Adil Masood Butt and other well educated students and teachers who had been arrested in past BY LAEs, had pointed out that other professors and students are allegedly running banned outfits on the campuses and also preparing man power for those organization.

“These days a war has been flamed out in the Middle East which has created sectarian differences among the students and faculty members, we better know that many students organizations are openly formed based on of different sects of Islam and they have been working inside the campuses which may be reinforced by those students and teachers” he concluded.

Published in Daily Times, July 9^th , 2017.