Cryptocurrency trader identifies two suspects involved in his abduction
A cryptocurrency trader, who was earlier kidnapped for ransom, has identified two suspects involved in his abduction during an identification parade before a judicial magistrate on Saturday.
Mohammad Arsalan, involved in the cryptocurrency business, was kidnapped in a police mobile on December 25 at 1:40am and released after payment of a ransom of $340,000. Eight suspects, including two Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) officials, have been arrested for their alleged involvement in the case.
Investigation Officer Makhdoom Moinuddin produced two suspects — Mohammad Rizwan Shah and Tariq Hasan Shah — before Judicial Magistrate (West) Hasnain Gul Dal for their identification parade.
They had a shawl draped over their heads to hide their identity as they were brought to court.
After completing legal formalities, the magistrate lined up the suspects one by one along with dummies and the trader rightly picked out them as the ones involved in his abduction.
He also assigned their roles in the commission of the offence saying the two men were sitting in the police mobile in which he was kidnapped.
Eight suspects — Haris Siddiqui, alias Ashar, Mohammad Rizwan Shah, Tariq Hassan Shah, alias Amir, Syed Muzamil Raza, Umer Jilani, Noman Riffat, Ali Sajjad and Muhammad Umer — are currently in police custody on physical remand and would
likely be produced before an anti-terrorism court on Monday on expiry of their remand.
An FIR was lodged under the sections 365-A (kidnapping or abducting for extorting property, valuable security, etc) and 34 (common intention) of the Pakistan Penal Code read with the Section 7 (punishment for acts of terrorism) of the Anti-Terrorism Act.
The complainant stated that private individuals, under the pretext of buying dollars, used a police mobile with police officers in plain clothes to kidnap him.
They then took him from Manghopir to a spot near the Saddar passport office, where they transferred around $340,000 from his Binance account to their different accounts. After that they abandoned him near the Mazar-e-Quaid.
