New Delhi: Karachi-based underworld don Uzair Baloch, who Pakistan claimed was helping arrested former Indian Navy officer Kulbhushan Jadhav spy on the country, had confessed a year ago to passing “secret information” to an Iranian agency, according to Pakistan media reports.
Pakistan’s military had on Tuesday announced it had taken custody of Uzair Baloch on charges of “espionage” and “leaking of sensitive security information to foreign intelligence agencies”.
Baloch, the uncrowned king of Karachi’s notorious Lyari slums, had also visited Chaman and Chabahar in Iran – areas where Jadhav had operated his dhow business – claimed Pakistan media.
Dawn reported that Baloch’s 13-page, self-written confessional statement emerged hours after late-night tweets by the Pakistan military announced Baloch’s custody.
“It was recorded before the judicial magistrate south in April 2016 under Section 64 of the CrPC [Criminal Procedure Code],” the report quoted Pakistani Rangers’ senior special public prosecutor Sajid Mahboob Sheikh as saying.
A report in Geo News said Baloch was nabbed by the Rangers on January 30 last year and handed over to the Army later that year. The report said that after the 90-day remand, the gangster had made a confessional statement, where he accepted the charges against him.
Baloch confessed that he shared information on the Pakistani armed forces with Iranian intelligence, the Geo News report said. He reportedly claimed that one Haji Nasir, an alleged member of the Iranian intelligence, introduced him to other members of the agency.
He had also alleged threats to his life from former president Asif Ali Zardari.
Uzair Baloch, the son of a transporter, earned notoriety in Lyari — a Karachi neighbourhood known for gang wars among the various ethnic communities of Baloch, Pashtuns and Mohajirs — after the killing of Rehman Baloch in an alleged encounter with police in 2009.
Baloch is allegedly involved in extortion, attacks on security personnel and spying for foreign intelligence agencies. He is booked in over 100 cases involving murders, attempted murders, extortion, arms smuggling, attacks on police and Rangers and spying for foreign intelligence agencies.
Dawn report quoted the Lyari gangster as telling a Joint investigations team (JIT) that he fled to Iran after the Rangers launched an operation in Karachi in September 2013.
“He was living with his friend, Malik Baloch, in Chabahar, where he met Haji Nasir who held dual nationality,” it said, adding that Haji Nasir offered Baloch to shift him to Tehran permanently where he would be provided a residence with no cost as he [Nasir] had “good relations with Iranian intelligence officers and he can arrange his meeting with them”.
As Uzair Baloch gave his consent to the offer, the JIT report said, his meeting was arranged with an Iranian intelligence official who tasked him to “provide certain information about [Pakistani] armed forces officials besides general security environment of the city [Karachi]”.
Uzair Baloch told the JIT that of his 14 lieutenants six at that time were still living in Chabahar.
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