RAWALPINDI, May 11: A man ‘missing’ for over seven months was found murdered and buried in the kitchen of his house in  Westridge early Friday, police said.

The elder son, wife and brother-in-law of the 44-year-old father of six have been arrested.

A few days after Mohammad Arif disappeared on September 20, 2011, his elder son Mohammad Sharif lodged a complaint with Westridge police that his father, a drug addict, had left the house but did not return.

But Sultan Mehmood, the father of the deceased, suspected a foul play and lodged a kidnapping-for-ransom case with the police on May 6.

“Whenever I asked about the whereabouts of my son, his wife and children would not give me any satisfactory answer,” he told the police.

SI Ameer Gondal, who was leading investigation into the case, told Dawn: “We took into custody Mr Arif’s wife Zehroon Bibi, elder son Mohammad Sharif and brother-in-law Ulfat Hussain on suspicion.”

The IO said after hours of ‘typical’ police questioning, the missing man’s son confessed to murdering his father and burying body in the kitchen.

About the motive behind the killing, he said the elder son always got provoked on seeing his parents quarrel over domestic issues. He said the accused had killed his father by hitting his head with a baton. Later, in connivance with his mother and the maternal uncle, the accused buried the body in the kitchen.

“The wife of the victim along with her six children was staying in the house after burying the body in the kitchen,” the IO said.

Mohammad Shaban, a nephew of the deceased, told Dawn that since his uncle went missing nobody from his family was being allowed to go into his house. “Even my younger cousins were not allowed to talk to me. I believe that all of my cousins were aware of the murder,” Shaban said. —Mohammad Asghar