The investigators have found out that the chemical found in the threatening letters sent to the Supreme Court and the high courts’ judges was different from ordinary arsenic, sources said on Monday. The Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) teams went to different stores to purchase arsenic. And when they looked at it, they found out that unlike the arsenic found in the letter which was white, the one they had purchased was yellow, sources said, adding this led them to decide that now they would seek assistance from drugs and chemicals manufacturing companies. The investigators had now prepared lists of pharmaceutical companies, they disclosed.

Around six days ago, eight judges of the Islamabad High Court (IHC), including the high court Chief Justice Aamer Farooq, received letters laced with a chemical, which was initially thought to be arsenic.  The incident took place a few days after six of these judges wrote a letter to the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) in which they had alleged interference by the country’s intelligence agencies in their work, prompting the Supreme Court (SC) to take suo motu notice of it. Later, same letters mixed with a toxic substance landed in the SC and the Lahore High Court (LHC) as well; hence further exacerbating the problem. 

Credit: Independent News Pakistan