The NWFP government quietly corrected the mistakes made in its earlier list of the wanted Swat militants and placed a new advertisement in the newspapers on Tuesday, offering higher amount of head money for the capture of the 21 top Taliban commanders.A minimum of Rs10 million as head money was offered for the capture, dead or alive, of 20 Taliban commanders from Swat. Earlier, amounts ranging from Rs1 million to Rs4 million were announced for the capture of these 20 men. The decision to raise the head money was apparently made to tempt informers and improve the chances for the capture of the wanted militants.
For Maulana Fazlullah, the head money remained the same, i.e. Rs50 million. In fact, the federal government had raised it to Rs50 million after realising that the amount of Rs10 million being offered by the NWFP government was too small to lure bounty hunters.
In the new list advertised by the provincial government, the name of Taliban commander Liaquat has been removed as he was already in jail but the authorities were unaware of this fact. The name of Maulana Rasheed Ahmad has also been omitted because he had left Swat a year ago after being cleared by the intelligence agencies and freed by a court. Since May 2008, he had been teaching at a seminary in Turangzai village of Charsadda, a fact vouchsafed by elders of the area and leaders belonging to the JUI-F.
The government also did not publish the picture of militant commander Qari Mushtaq after having committed a blunder by putting the photo of the wrong person, banker Mohammad Mushtaq, in the previous advertisement. The government still does not have the picture of Qari Mushtaq and the place for the photo in the advertisement was left blank.
The government also added a few names to the wanted list. One is Fakhar Alam alias Mufti Aftab, who was a member of the Taliban court and whose picture was published, another is Maulana Mohammad Alam Binori alias Khalil, and the third is Omar Rahman alias Fateh. Their names were missing in the earlier list. There were no photos of Khalil and Fateh in the advertisement.
Others in the list were also listed in the earlier advertisement. They included Muslim Khan, Maulana Shah Dauran, Mahmood Khan, Akbar Hussain, Sher Mohammad Qasab, Sirajuddin, Bakht Farzand, Mian Gul Ghafoor, Nisar Ahmad, Lal Din alias Baray Mian, Anwarullah alias Anwar, Bashir Ahmad, Sultan Hussain, Ibne Amin, Shahinshah from Shah Dheray and Maulana Mohammad Amin.
The government on Friday increased the head money for