RAWALPINDI, Nov 27: Twelve suspects arrested by the city police for involvement in the Ashura day violence were sent to jail on judicial remand by an anti-terrorism court on Wednesday.

City Police Officer (CPO) Akhtar Umar Hayat Laleka told a press conference that the 12 were among the 40 individuals picked up by investigators after viewing the video and Close Circuit Television footage of the violence.

Twenty-one of them were let off after questioning and hunt was on for the rest, and for others identified as suspects later.

Interestingly, the CPO named a serving and an ex-policeman among the suspects Shamimul Hassan serving in the Criminal Investigation Agency as a driver, and former constable Farzand Ali Bangash.

Dawn has learnt that after discovering that a suspect, with the first name of Hafeez, had fled to Iran, the city police approached the government to put the names of all the suspects on the Exit Control List. But the CPO did not confirm the information.

Asked about the casualties on that day, CPO Laleka said no student of the Madressah Taleemul Quran was among the 11 people killed in the sectarian violence in which the ma-dressah, and the mosque and the market attached to it, were burnt down.

Surprisingly, the police have not questioned the 19 clerics of both sides they had nominated in the FIR they registered with the Ganjmandi police under Section 7 of Anti-Terrorism Act about the bloody sectarian violence of November 15.

`None of them has been investigated by the police so far,` CPO Laleka said responding to a question at the press conference.

According to the FIR, Maulana Ashraf Ali, Qari Shakir, Maulana Amanullah, Maulana Maqsood Usmani, Tanveer Alam of Sadigabad, Abdul Rasheed, Qari Sanaullah of Madni Masjid, Qari Nisar Ahmed, prominent leaders of the banned Sipah-i-Sahaba group and up to 200 worshippers were present in the mosque.

Among the clerics in the Ashura procession, the FIR named Shaukat Jaffari, Bashir Zaidi, Zaigum Abbas, Chaman Shah, Amjad Hussain, Nazar Hussain, Tahir Abbas Kazmi, H.M Zaidi, Nazar Hussain, Syed Mehdi, Alam Dar Hussain and Ishfaq Wahdi.

The FIR mentioned that the large number of youngsters from Parachinar and Baltistan in the procession stormed the madressah complex.