Britain’s Metropolitan Police Service has confirmed that the documents circulating in social media about the confession statement of Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) leader Tariq Mir about receiving money from Indian RAW.
London police spokesman Alan Crockford told British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) via an email. “The document bearing a transcript of a New Scotland Yard interrogation with MQM’s Mir is not our property and has never been a part of our record,”
According to a report published in BBC Urdu (Service), Crockerford said that his department had reached to this conclusion after carefully examining the document.
“We can confirm it is not a Met Police paper,” Crockerford said.
He, however, did not comment on whether the paper was forged or the statement was fabricated.
According to the BBC report, MQM members had been given training in “explosives, weapons and sabotage” by New Delhi.
It was vehemently denied by New Delhi and by the MQM, which has its power base in the southern city of Karachi and which critics accuse of ruling using violence and extortion.
Read: MQM top leader, Tariq Mir confesses Indian funding
Speaking to reporters Thursday, Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan said: “I am going to address a letter to the British government on behalf of our government tomorrow to officially ask them to give Pakistan access to the BBC report, the facts and the investigation.”
The request for assistance may stem from a claim in the report that MQM members confessed over the course of formal interviews with British authorities to having received an unspecified sum of Indian funding.
Khan, who met the British High Commissioner in Pakistan Philip Barton earlier in the day, added: “It is the responsibility of the British government to extend as much help as possible to Pakistan in this regard.”
London’s Metropolitan Police are currently investigating the MQM over money-laundering after a huge quantity of cash was reportedly found at party offices and exiled leader Altaf Hussain’s home in London.
Read: BBC report:Security Establishment seeks treason case against MQM
As well as the money-laundering case, British police are also probing the murder of MQM politician Imran Farooq in London in 2010.
Political observers believe the party, which was close to the country’s powerful military establishment during the 1999-2008 rule of military strongman Pervez Musharraf, has since fallen out of favour.
The party blames the paramilitary Rangers force for carrying out extrajudicial killings and kidnappings of its activists. (PhotoNews / Agencies)
