Five more held over escape of prisoner in Dua Mangi case

With Zohaib Qureshi, the main accused of the Dua Mangi kidnapping case, still at large after his escape from Tariq Road on January 27, police have arrested five more people over the incident. Moreover, keeping in view the sensitivity of the case, the investigation has been transferred to the Anti-Violent Crime Cell (AVCC).

The suspects arrested in the latest raids include two Munshis of the court police and a brother of a leader of a nationalist party of Sindh. “As the investigation of the case has been transferred to the AVCC, the five suspects — four personnel of the court police and a driver of a ride-hailing service — have also been handed over to the AVCC police for further investigation,” District East Investigation SSP Altaf Hussain told The News. “Earlier, we had also raided the residence of a nationalist party’s leader to make arrests in connection with Qureshi’s escape, but we had returned empty-handed,” he said, adding that Qureshi is a nephew of a nationalist party’s leader.

While the District East investigation police had failed to make any arrest from the residence of the party leader in Gulshan-e-Hadeed, the AVCC police have reportedly taken the leader’s younger brother and two of their employees into custody.

Moreover, the District East investigation police arrested two policemen (Munshis) of the court police for allegedly facilitating the already arrested policemen of the court police.

The investigators said the detainees repeatedly used to assign the already arrested court policemen to produce Qureshi in court over the past six months. The investigators are also looking into the details of the people who used to visit Qureshi in jail to include them into the investigation.

With the recent arrests, the number of suspects taken into custody for aiding and abetting Qureshi has risen to eight. From now on the investigation of the case will be conducted by the AVCC. The convicted prisoner had escaped after giving the court police officials the slip when they had taken him to a shopping centre on Tariq Road on their way back to the Central Jail Karachi from the trial court.

Keeping in view the sensitivity of the case, the jail authorities later declared the production of the other four prisoners in the Dua Mangi kidnapping case outside the jail risky, and requested the home department to conduct their trial inside the jail.