Two of the suspects involved in the abduction of a five-year-old boy from the city’s upscale Defence neighbourhood on Wednesday were gunned down in a police encounter on Saturday.
Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Saqib Ismail Memon, the chief of the Crime Investigation Agency in Karachi, said five-year-old Mohammad Ubaan, son of Mohammad Ghufran, was kidnapped from Phase-VIII of the Defence Housing Authority while he was on his way home from school in a car with his mother.
DIG Memon said that later in the day, the kidnappers approached the residence of the abducted boy and threw in a paper on which they had scribbled a message for the child’s family saying that they would phone them within the next few hours to convey their demand to release the kidnapping victim.
Later that night, the kidnappers rang up the boy’s family and demanded a sum of Rs150 million as ransom before they would agree to release the child, following which the case was transferred for investigation to the Anti-Violent Crime Cell (AVCC) and the Citizens-Police Liaison Committee, added the police officer.
The DIG said the police officials posed as the kidnapping victim’s family members and negotiated with the abductors to reduce the amount of the ransom money, and both parties finally settled on the sum of Rs300,000. The officer said that during their investigation, the police had pinned down the location of one of the accused in Gulistan-e-Jauhar, following which they carried out a raid in the locality in the wee hours of Thursday and rescued the boy after an encounter, but the kidnappers managed to escape from the scene.
Memon said that around 48 hours later, the police located the same accused in the early hours of Saturday near Kamran Chowrangi in the Gulistan-e-Jauhar neighbourhood. Acting on the information received, AVCC personnel conducted a raid in the locality, but seeing the police team approach, the accused opened fire at the law enforcers, who retaliated and arrested two kidnappers in an injured condition after a brief encounter, added the DIG.
He said the police team also recovered the ransom amount of Rs100,000 that the kidnappers had earlier taken from the family, as well as the purse and mobile phone of the boy’s mother. The kidnappers, who succumbed to their injuries, were identified as Zaheer Mirza, who hailed from Lahore, and Zaki, who resided in Karachi, and both of them had formed a kidnapping for ransom group.
Meanwhile, Inspector General of Police AD Khowaja announced a reward of Rs100,000 for the raiding team. The Sindh police chief also appreciated the efforts of the police party. Moreover, Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah told the police chief that such incidents of kidnappings for ransom should not occur in future.He ordered that appropriate measures should be taken to prevent such crimes from happening.
Woman stabbed to death
A 32-year-old woman was stabbed to death by her brother-in-law during a spat in a bungalow in North Nazimabad’s Block H on Friday night.
Hyderi police SHO Zulfiqar Haider said Aasia, wife of Rizwan, was critically injured when she was stabbed by her brother-in-law, Kamran. She later died at the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital. Police arrested the suspect and started an investigation.
Woman slaughtered
A 23-year-old woman was slaughtered by unidentified men in Manghopir’s Mir Muhammad Goth. Manghopir police SHO Haji Sanaullah said police attended the scene after residents told them by phone that the corpse of a woman was lying in a rainwater drain. No identify papers were found on the deceased, who was carried to the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital (ASH) for a postmortem examination. A medico-legal officer said in her report that the woman’s throat had been slit with a sharp object. The body was placed at the Edhi morgue for want of identification.