Mureed Abbas murder unearths startling story of Rs3 billion fraud

KARACHI: Preliminary investigation into the murder of anchorperson Mureed Abbas and his friend Khizar Hayat by prime suspect Atif Zaman has disentangled startling revelations.

Earlier, according to the initial investigation shared by SSP Tariq Dharejo, it was found out that Zaman was employed at a tyre company few years back and was later got involved in smuggling and money laundering.

It has now been revealed, as per the suspect's confessional statement, that more than 100 people had invested in him a total money of a whopping Rs3 billion.

Zaman added that the number of people seeking to invest in his lucrative business had drastically increased over time.

He also said that over 40 people belonging to the media industry had invested heavily in him and he even started a company with the money he had.

However, Zaman further confessed, that most of the money he made was obtained through illegal sources which mainly involved smuggling tyres from Afghanistan.

He said that he got people to trust and confide in him by employing technical antics and faced immense financial crunch after the smuggled goods were confiscated and he had to spend hefty amount of money to retrieve them.

This had caused him to fail to return the due profits to his business partners on time which in turn had made them lose their trust in him, Zaman stated.

He had also purchased several properties in Karachi which he thought he would sell in order to pay back the money to the investors.

However, Zaman said, the way he received abduction threats for wife and son caused him to take such an extreme and vengeful step which eventually resulted in the murder of news anchor Mureed Abbas.