Hafiz Saeed placed under house arrest in Lahore

Police raided the office of the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) in Lahore on Monday and put its leader Hafiz Saeed and four of his associates under preventive detention at their residence for an indefinite period.

The outfit and its charity arm, Falah-i-Insaaniyat, have been put on the terrorist watch list, though an expected ban was not announced.

A notification was issued by the Interior Ministry on the action against Hafiz Saeed.

U.S. threatened sanctions

The crackdown came after reports in Pakistani newspapers claimed that the U.S. had threatened sanctions if Pakistan did not ban the JuD. Hours before the action, Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar confirmed the reports at a press conference in Islamabad. “We have been deliberating on the fate of the JuD for quite sometime now. It will be decided in the next 24 hours,” he had told the media.

Meanwhile, the JuD had replaced its flags with Pakistani ones at its centres in Punjab province. Tehrik-i-Azadi-i Kashmir replaced JuD on the signboards.

The U.N. and the U.S. have already declared JuD a terrorist organisation but Pakistan had stalled action after the JuD got a reprieve from the Punjab High Court.

India has long been accusing the JuD and Hafiz Saeed of launching terror attacks in Mumbai.