Eight arrested for issuing SIMs for APS attackers.

Pakistan, Lahore: CIA police arrested eight employees of a franchise of a famous cellular company for apparently selling illegal SIMs to the fishy involved in Peshawar mass murder.

According to police, the police raiding team also recovered over 200 SIMs from them which were being misused in different vicinities of the country.

The Taliban had used those SIMs for communicating with their any other accompanying person and those SIMs were purchased from a franchise of tehsil Hasilpur district Bahawalpur.

The arrested staff members of that franchise have been identified as franchise owner Kashif Zia, Ateeq-ur-Rehman, Azam Kazmi, Mubashir Rizwan, Rehman Ali, Zahid and Sajjad.

Another police official said the SIMs used by the terrorists in Peshawar school attack were registered in the name of a person-working at a bakery in Lahore named Rehman Ali, and a woman from Hasilpur. He said the SIMs were purchased from a general store of two brothers Sajjad and Zahid located in Hasilpur.

He said that the two brothers were in police custody and they accepted the blame of their links with the Taliban activists.

The franchise manager Rehman declared that franchise owner gave him the target of issuing the SIMs. The manager also admitted that he issued double SIMs on one impression and gave the one SIM to the customer and keeping the other for retailers to earn Rs. 5,000 for each day, the police official explained.

Police has also arrested the other culprits on the information of the arrested manager of the franchise.

Another senior police official said that all the doubtful persons were employees of a leading cellular company’s franchise and they were issuing SIMs without verification of the customers.

He further said that the customers even did not know that either these SIMs were registered in their name or not.