Daily Times

Karachi: Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah has decided to conduct security audit of all the shrines, mosques, temples, churches and such other holy places of worship; public and important places. “We all have to place efficient system to fight against terrorists.”

He said this while presiding over a meeting to review over security of shrines, holy places and other public places here at the CM House today. The meeting was attended by Chief Secretary Rizwan Memon, IG Sindh AD Khowaja, Additional IG Karachi Mushtaq Maher and Additional IG CTD Sanaullah Abbasi. Special Assistant to CM on Auqaf Ghulam Shah, Secretary Auqaf Riaz Soomro and other concerned officers latter joined the meeting.

Briefing the chief minister IG Police AD Khowaja said that the blast took place at 7 pm and at that time there was power outage. On this the Secretary Auqaf said that it was not outage but Hesco had disconnected power connection of the shrine. The chief secretary confirming the report said that the Hesco had issued a Rs40 million electricity bill to the Shrine and against non-payment of the bill they took away their main power cable.

The chief minister expressing displeasure said that after reconciliation of total Sindh government power bill with Water & Power Ministry installments are being paid to them on the agreed schedule. It was also agreed with the ministry that no Sindh government connections would be disconnected in non-payment. “How did Hesco dare to disconnect power connection of the main shrine,” this is unacceptable and he directed the commissioner Hyderabad who was on the video link, to direct HESCO to re install the power connection of the shrine before evening, otherwise be ready to bear consequences.

The Commissioner after talking to Hesco CEO told the chief minister that some illegal connections were taken from the main connection of the shrine, therefore they have disconnected the main connection of the shrine. On this the chief minister said that instead of disconnecting illegal connections the Hesco has disconnected main connection of the shrine. This is crime and I would take legal action if they fail to restore power connection of the shrine.

The IG police continuing his briefing said that some arrests have been made to trace the incident but it has quite clear similarities with the incident of Shikarpur blast. The chief minister said that he wants the case to be worked out at the earliest.

The IG said that some evidences have been collected from the shrine and they were being sent to Lahore for lab test. The chief minister constituted a committee under Additional IG CTD Sanaullah Abbasi to investigate the case from different angels and work it out at the earliest.

The divisional commissioners briefed the chief minister about the number of shrines, holy places of worships of different religions and sects and told him that they have beefed up their security.

He directed IG Police to constitute a special team comprising experts of security audit and take someone from Auqaf department and suggest necessary measures.

The chief minister on the advice of chief secretary Rizwan Memon approved recruitment of local `Searchers- male and female, purely on merit by Auqaf department who would be given special training by the police. These searchers would Search each and every visitor for security.

He also directed the Auqaf department to install CCTV cameras at all the important shrines and establish a control room to keep an eye on the movement of each and every visitor.

He also took another important decision to construct compound wall around the shrines where they are required and also ordered Chief Secretary and IG police to get all kind of encroachments from and around the shrines.

Earlier, the chief minister was give closed-door briefing on the progress of investigation into the case, links, and arrests of suspects made so far by IG police AD Khawaja, Additional IG Police Sanaullah Abbasi.