KARACHI, Feb 12: Police on Sunday found the body of a 12-year-old boy, who had been kidnapped on Feb 8, in Gulistan-i-Jauhar and claimed to have arrested four youngsters for the murder.

Twelve-year-old Zaheem Ranjha, a son of the slain DSP Nawaz Ranjha, was kidnapped on Feb 8 at around 7.45pm near his apartment building on main Rashid Minhas Road.

Citizen-Police Liaison Committee chief Ahmed Chinoy told Dawn that some friends of the victim boy had called him outside the apartment building from where they drove him away in a taxicab.

Following the kidnapping, the boy’s mother contacted the CPLC and the Sharea Faisal police station, where an FIR (120/2012) was registered on her complaint under Section 365-A (kidnapping for ransom) of the Pakistan Penal Code, as the family received a telephone call demanding a ransom of Rs20 million for his release, he added.

The family was not sure that which friend of Zaheem had called him and investigators held detailed interviews of the family as well as the victim’s probable friends, the CPLC chief said, adding that finally they got a lead and picked up a student of an engineering university, identified as Osama, who used to give tuition to Zaheem in his flat.

He said that after getting further leads during the night between Saturday and Sunday, the police and the CPLC carried out a joint raid at a house in Gulistan-i-Jauhar’s Block 8 and picked up two half brothers, identified as Ali Raza and Haider Raza.

Their third accomplice, identified as Zohaib Tariq, was taken into custody in Khokhrapar.

The suspects are aged between 18 and 23 years.Mr Chinoy said that the suspects were questioned and they confessed to kidnapping and killing the boy.

However, they did attempt to doge the police and CPLC officials and told them that they had dumped the body in a storm drain in Malir Cantonment.

The police went there and tried to search the body but could not find it. Later, the suspect told the police the exact place where they had buried the victim after killing him, he added.

In fact they told the investigators that they had brought the victim boy to their house, kept him on the rooftop and bludgeoned him to death with a big stone the same night (Feb 8), said Mr Chinoy, adding that they buried him on a vacant plot right next to their house in Gul Homes, Gulistan-i-Jauhar’s Block 8.

The police on Sunday recovered the body on the information provided by the suspects after completing required legal formalities. The body was stuffed in an embryo-shaped plastic bag.

“We first thought that the body had been chopped into pieces, but a post-mortem examination revealed that it was in one piece, bore torture marks and a severe head injury,” Mr Chinoy said.

The suspects told the investigators that they had become friends with Zaheem as they visited his flat to carry out repair jobs on different occasions.

They said Osama had not planned the kidnapping but the two half brothers and their third accomplice came up with the plan. The police also seized three pistols from the suspects.

The victim boy was a class seventh student and son of the slain DSP Nawaz Ranjha, who was gunned down in Aug 2010 on main M. A. Jinnah Road in a targeted killing incident.

The first wife of the slain DSP and two children had died in a fire that broke out in his Garden residence back in the 1990s. One girl had survived the incident and now she is a medical student.

Later, the slain police officer contracted a second marriage and the 12-year-old victim was from his second wife.