Man gets life in jail for kidnapping, murdering Dr Aftab Ahmed Qureshi

An anti-terrorism court (ATC) on Tuesday convicted and awarded life imprisonment to a man for abducting and killing a neurosurgeon in 2012.

The court also ordered confiscation of the movable and immovable properties of the convict, Ashok Kumar, who had kidnapped and later murdered Dr Aftab Ahmed Qureshi. However, seven co-accused were acquitted for want of evidence about their involvement in the murder.

Dr Qureshi was kidnapped from the Saddar area of Karachi and taken to Hyderabad. When a police team tried to arrest the kidnappers and rescue Dr Qureshi, an encounter began and a gunshot fired by Kumar fatally hit the neurosurgeon.

The kidnap and killing case lodged at the Brigade police station. Kumar was arrested by the Citizens-Police Liaison Committee and the Anti-Violent Crime Cell on May 30, 2012. He had been living with his mother, Kamla Devi, on the ground floor of a house in Karachi when he had planned to abduct Dr Qureshi, who lived on the first floor of the house.

The Crime Branch of the Sindh police obtained his remand on the 16th day of his detention on June 14, 2012. Kumar had claimed that some police officers had grabbed his hand and taken him to the room where the doctor was lying dead. He had alleged that the police had told him that they had killed a terrorist and he had informed them that the deceased was actually the doctor.

Meanwhile, the landlord of the house, Ghulam Sarwar Noonari, recorded his statement in the civil courts. He said six people had met him for renting the house and named themselves as Dr Ashok Kumar, Dr Daud Gishkori, Zain Jathyal, Ghulam Ali Khoso and Akhtar Siyal. “We settled at Rs25,000 per month as rent and an advance of Rs50,000.” Noonari also said that Kumar and his mother were the first ones to begin living in the house.

However, Kumar claimed that he had been kidnapped and had spent the past one and a half months in the house as a captive, not as a kidnapper. He also claimed to have passed on the information to then DSP Ghulam Mustafa Memon in Karachi, which eventually led to the raid by the law enforcers.

He had also claimed that Crime Branch DIG Farhat Junejo had assured him that he would do justice. However, Kumar turned out be the kidnapper and the killer. Seven others, including Imdad Ali Solangi, Azhar Solangi, Farooq Laghari, Aziz Barejo and Hoth Banglani, were found innocent and acquitted.