Trader picks out three suspects in Orangi burglary case identification parade

A trader whose house was looted in a raid in Orangi Town last month on Wednesday identified three suspects as the ones involved in the alleged crime during an identification parade before a judicial magistrate.

DSP Umair Tariq Bajari and five other suspects have been arrested and booked on charges of raiding the house of trader Shakir Khan and kidnapping him and his brother on the night between November 18 and 19.

The investigating officer produced the suspects —Kamran Shahrukh, Sohail and Izhar — before a judicial magistrate (West) for their identification by the complainant.

The magistrate, completing legal formalities, arranged the suspects along with dummies in a line and then asked the complainant to identify the suspects. The trader rightly picked them out as those involved in the crime. After conducting the parade, he sent the suspects back to the prison on judicial remand until the next date. An FIR was registered on Khan’s complaint at the Pirabad police station under sections 452 (house-trespass after preparation for hurt, assault or wrongful restraint), 342 (punishment for wrongful confinement), 395 (punishment for dacoity) and 365 (kidnapping) of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) against Bajari, constables Khurram Ali and Farhan Ali, and 15 to 20 others, among whom some were in police uniform and others were in plain clothes.

“I am associated with the sanitary business and am a distributor for all sanitary companies. On November 19, armed individuals wearing police uniforms and plain clothes arrived in a black Vigo, a police mobile and a Mehran, and on motorbikes,” reads the FIR. “They started searching my house, holding all my family hostage in a room. My brother Aamir and I were put in the mobile with our money and other belongings. Our faces were covered with cloth, so we couldn’t see anything. They left us on the Baloch Colony flyover, fleeing with our cash and other belongings.”

The complainant said the Pirabad SHO was requested to register a case, but he refused, and it was later revealed that it was not a raid but a robbery. He said they were then called to the Defence police station, where the Defence SHO returned Rs13.5 million, 50 tolas of gold and other valuables to him.