The BBC's Owen Bennett Jones reports on how the confusion could have happened

Fingerprints and distinguishing marks on the dead man did not match those of the wanted man, a senior Punjabi official has revealed.

Riaz Basra and his associate, Aziz ur Rehman, were thought to have been killed in a gun battle that lasted almost three hours around the city of Sargodha, 170 km from the eastern Punjab capital of Lahore.

Punjab Province Governor Shahid Hamid has confirmed that it was not Basra, but another "hardened criminal" belonging to the Sunni Muslim Lashkar-i-Jangvi group that Basra founded.

Assassination attempt

Six other men were arrested during the gun fight.

Basra is wanted in connection with several hundred sectarian murders, mostly of members of minority Shi'ite Muslim groups.

And his organisation stands accused of a failed plot to assassinate Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif earlier this year.

The Pakistani government has announced a bounty of 5m rupees for information leading to Basra's arrest.

He has been arrested before, in 1992, when he was sentenced to death for the murder of Iranian diplomat Sadeq Ganji - gunned down in Lahore in 1990.

300 dead

But Basra has been on the run ever since escaping from prison in 1994.

The Lashkar-i-Jangvi group has a reputation as one of the most extreme organisations in Pakistan.

The group claimed to have killed Iranian diplomats and officials in Pakistan.

Pakistani officials say they have been putting pressure on Lashkar i Jangvi ever since the attempted assassination of the prime minister earlier this year.