IHC orders police to recover NCCIA official in three days

ISLAMABAD: Police in the federal capital on Monday were given a three-day deadline by the Islamabad High Court to recover the director of the National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA), who was allegedly abducted from Islamabad last week.

Hearing a petition filed against the alleged kidnapping of NCCIA Deputy Director Muhammad Usman, Justice Muhammad Azam Khan said that the NCCIA’s Central and Islamabad IG should appear before the court in person if the police are unable to recover him within three days.

The case’s hearing comes after a first information report (FIR) was lodged at Shams Colony Police Station on the complaint of the deputy director’s wife Rozina Usman who said that her husband was serving as Deputy Director (Operations) at NCCIA and was working on several sensitive projects.

She reported on October 14, at around 7:30pm, four unidentified armed men arrived in a white corolla and, at gunpoint, took her husband away to an unknown location. The police have registered a case and launched a search for the abducted officer. Meanwhile, during the case hearing today, it was revealed that the abductee’s wife Rozina, who is the petitioner, had also gone “missing”.

“I do not know where the petitioner is, I fear that she has also been taken away,” said Advocate Raja Rizwan Abbasi — who’s representing Rozina. “The petitioner [Rozina] called me and said that she is being pressured to withdraw the petition,” the lawyer added, while noting that Deputy Director Usman was working on important cases and was allegedly kidnapped in a white car.

“Now the petitioner’s phone is also turned off and there is no contact with her,” the counsel remarked. At Advocate Abbasi’s request for the NCCIA director and the Islamabad IG to be summoned in the case, the police said that they would try to recover Usman by today evening but urged the court to give them seven days.

“In CCTV footage, he was kidnapped in a suspicious vehicle whose number plate is fake,” the petitioner’s lawyer said. To this, Justice Azam Khan inquired: “If the vehicle’s number plate is suspicious, how was it being driven in Islamabad?”

“This is a very serious matter, there are checkpoints in the city and CCTV cameras are also there,” the judge remarked. “You [police] should get him back, otherwise, we will also start what the other benches are doing,” Justice Azam Khan said, while directing the police to get the call data record (CDR) to track the calls made to pressurise the petitioner.