Members of the Pakistani militant group, the Jash-e-Mohammad, hijacked a passenger bus after the driver defied their order to stop playing tape-recorded Indian film songs, police said Saturday.
After evacuating the passengers the five men forced the driver at gunpoint to drive the bus to the family residence-cum-office of the group's head Masood Azhar in Bahawalpur city in Punjab province, they said.
The incident took place Friday when the private transport bus was on a regular run from Faisalabad to Bahawalpur, senior police officer Khalid Iqbal told AFP.
Jash-e-Mohmmad was founded by religious scholar Azhar after his release on December 31, 1999 by India in a deal to end the hijacking of an Indian Airlines commercial jet, which had been taken to Afghanistan.
The group is involved in the ongoing armed separatist Muslim drive in the Indian-administered part of disputed Kashmir along with several other guerrilla outfits.
Azhar was not in Bahawalpur where his men detained the driver and his assistant for 10 hours before police raided and rescued the pair and their vehicle and took into custody 29 Jash activists, Iqbal said.
Later more than 1,000 people, many of them armed with bamboo sticks, surrounded a Bhawalpur police station and threatened to burn the place if the arrested men were not freed, he said.
"We urgently contacted Azhar in (southern port city) Karachi. He gave instructions to his deputy in Bahawalpur after which the crowd dispersed," the officer said.
The 29 men, who include Azhar's brother Tahir, have been charged with keeping unlicensed arms and hijacking a bus, Iqbal said -- MULTAN, Pakistan (AFP)
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