Two weeks on, no clue to fugitive MPA’s whereabouts

PESHAWAR: There is still no clue about a Member Provincial Assembly (MPA), who escaped two weeks back from an apparently well-guarded sub-jail, where he was kept after his arrest in a murder case.

A case was lodged in the East Cantt Police Station after MPA Faisal Zaman accused of murder escaped in a black double-cabin vehicle from the sub-jail in the MPAs hostel in Peshawar on April 22.

“The police raided the places where the accused could be hiding. The senior superintendent of police operations is supervising the raids to arrest the fleeing lawmaker,” a spokesman for the Peshawar Police said on Friday. He added a special team had been constituted that was conducting raids regularly on the basis of any information. The provincial government had also constituted a committee for the arrest of the MPA and to find how he managed to escape from custody. However, nothing solid could be done so far to re-arrest him.

“Measures have been taken so that the accused cannot escape abroad. The Federal Investigation Agency has been approached and airports alerted,” said the official.

The official added that the police had approached the Excise Department to get details of the car that Faisal boarded while escaping from the MPAs hostel. He said the authorities had been asked to help find the owner of the car. MPA Faisal Zaman was arrested after a PTI leader Tahir Iqbal was killed along with his friend and former councillor Sardar Gul Nawaz on September 13, 2020.

Faisal was one of the two accused who was arrested by the police and the Counter-Terrorism Department.

He was shifted to Peshawar a few weeks back for an assembly session and instead of the prison, he was kept in a room of the MPAs hostel that was declared a sub-jail.

Apart from the police, five personnel of the Prisons Department had been deployed at the sub-jail when he escaped.

His videos with background music filmed in jail also went viral on social media, earning criticism over the way the VIPs were treated in jails.

The CCTV footage of his escape also revealed there were not many restrictions from the guards of prisons and police in the sub-jail.

Recently, the family members of the two slain men told the media that they felt insecure since the day the influential accused escaped the sub-jail.