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By Our Staff Reporter
KARACHI, Jan 7: The murder
case of Maulana Salahuddin has taken
dramatic turn with the startling disclosures
by his daughter that she suspects the
involvement of her husband in the
assassination of her father, who was editor
of Takbeer. She called upon the government
to reinvestigate the case. She also pleaded
for associating her husband, Rafiq Afghan,
editor of an Urdu daily, with the inquiry
and added that she had decided to seek
separation from her husband. Speaking to
Dawn on Thursday, Saadia said she had sent a
request to the interior minister a few days
ago expressing her concern over the state of
investigations conducted in the case. She
said in her communication to the minister
that the police had installed "fake"
suspects.
The interior minister, Chaudhry Shujaat,
when contacted by Dawn, said that now the
case of Maulana Salahuddin, who was murdered
outside his offices in 1994, could not be
reinvestigated as a scrutiny committee
comprising the personnel of the army's judge
advocate general branch, military
intelligence, the ISI and the chief
secretary had scrutinised the case and
prepared it for its trial by a military
court. Terming the move by Saadia as a
"belated one", the interior minister said
Rafiq Afghan could not be cited even as
co-accused in the case according to the
procedures being adopted in the scrutiny and
disposal of cases.
In her letter to the federal
minister, Saadia said, she had expressed her
fears that Rafiq Afghan wanted to flee the
country with their two-year-old son and,
therefore, his name be put on the
exit control list. She said she had also
written that Rafiq would be fleeing the
country to either Iran or Afghanistan,
alleging that he had in his possession an ID
card with the fake name of Saleem, "and he
must be having a passport with a fake name,
as well."
A few days later, Saadia said, she
spoke to the interior minister who
acknowledged the receipt of her letter,
saying the government would definitely do
something in this regard.
Saadia, who, according to her, has
had estranged relations with her husband
ever since "he kicked me out from his house
in 1997", said that her suspicions, which
had now turned into a firm belief, were
based on "convincing reasons".
The woman claimed that the only witness and
complainant in the murder case, the late
Salahuddin's driver, had been coerced by her
husband to identify one of the two "fake"
suspects in police custody, Saleem TT. Later
on, she said, the CIA police on their own
brought the other "fake" suspect, Nadeem
Mota, to the residence of the driver, Amjad
Pervaiz, to force him to identify Nadeem as
well as an assassin.
She said the management of
Takbeer, headed by her, had taken a stand
soon after the case was reopened following
the imposition of governor's rule and had
detected numerous instances of foul play in
the investigations carried out by the
police.
She said Amjad Pervaiz volunteered
to speak out the truth when he found that
the magazine had already taken a stand on
the issue and on the occasion of second fake
identification he refused to oblige the
police. "I noticed a U-turn in the overall
attitude of my husband soon after the
reopening of the case as he who had ejected
me from the house was now showing
willingness to welcome me, which I refused,"
said Saadia, who was married to Rafiq Afghan
in 1988. Only yesterday, she said, the
witness (Amjad Pervaiz) was unofficially
produced before the high-ranking police
officials comprising, among others, the DIG
of Karachi, at Takbeer's offices. He told
them that he was shown various photographs
of suspect Saleem TT by Rafiq in the
latter's office "forcing" him to identify
the suspect for police.
Saadia claimed that in the entire course of
inquiries no one from Takbeer had been
approached by the law enforcement agencies
since the murder. She said that the driver
was approached independently and the
management had never been informed about it.
She said the situation suggested that the
police wanted to save the real culprits
involved in the conspiracy hatched to kill
her father.
The
DAWN Group of Newspapers, 1999
http://www.karachipage.com/news/Jan_99/010999.html
DAWN/The News International, KARACHI
09 January 1999, Saturday, 20 Ramzan 1419
Referring to reports appearing in Friday's newspapers, Mr Yunus said since his (Salahuddin) own daughter, Saadia Salahuddin, had requested the reopening of the murder case of her father, the government should not only heed the request but also put the name of Rafiq Afghan (the editor Ummat.) on the ECL.
He also insisted that since the daughter herself had named her husband (Rafiq Afghan the editor Ummat.) as a suspect in the murder of her father, the MQM should no more be held responsible for the killing and should be officially absolved of the crime.
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Those who made kill Liquiat Ali Khan, J.F.Kennedy, also made kill that man who killed them.