Karachi, Pakistan ? After aiming for the top and failing, investigators searching for kidnapped Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl have turned their attention away from the confessed mastermind of the abduction to a lower-level militant who allegedly sent Pearl off to the fake meeting that led to his disappearance.

But investigators who just days ago promised rapid developments in the case were not even in accord Saturday about the latest suspect’s name although they agreed that he was not at home when they raided his family’s house.

The new suspect probably is named Amjad Hussain Farooqi, but he also has been identified as Mansour Hussain and Haider Ali Farooqi, according to several police sources.

What investigators could agree on was that their latest quarry identified himself to Pearl as Imtiaz Siddiqi.

The man known as Siddiqi, they say, telephoned the correspondent within an hour before his disappearance Jan. 23 and sent him off to a meeting at a neighborhood restaurant in this port city with the promise that he would get a long-sought interview with a radical Islamic cleric.

Instead, the 38-year-old South Asia bureau chief for the Journal went missing. Since two e-mail messages from his kidnappers were sent three weeks ago, no one has come forward with information about his fate.

Investigators continued Saturday to interrogate Ahmad Omar Saeed Sheikh, the apparent ringleader of the kidnapping plot, in whom they had placed high hopes of ending the case after his arrest was announced Tuesday.

Sheikh has offered no concrete leads. He shocked authorities Thursday, blurting to a judge that, “As far as I understand, he (Pearl) is dead.” He also confessed to the kidnapping in open court and said he did not want to defend himself against any charges.

Investigators said that Sheikh was lying and that, until convinced otherwise, they were operating under the assumption that Pearl was alive. Pearl’s wife, Mariane, was also holding on to that belief.

Some investigation sources say the new focus of the hunt Farooqi might have been one of the hijackers of an Indian Airlines jet who demanded and received Sheikh’s release from an Indian prison in 1999.