ISLAMABAD, March 19: Three Islamabad police officers who went hunting for a Pakistani criminal hiding in Afghanistan located him near the city of Jalalabad but returned home Tuesday empty handed.

Police sources explained that since an extradition treaty does not exist between Afghanistan and Pakistan the officers could only identify their wanted man to the Afghan police and hope for action from them.

Connections and state rivalries seem to continue favour Roohullah who is wanted for murdering a retired judicial officer of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in the federal capital in February 2010.

A “close liaison” between the two sides on the case was all that AIG Tahir Alam Khan, SP Sajid Kiyani and Inspector Raja Rahat of Islamabad police achieved in their meeting with the governor and police chief of the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar during their six-day stay in the provincial capital of Jalalabad. Islamabad police are now pinning hope on the Nato allies of Afghanistan to get the Interpol’s red warrant against Roohullah implemented.

They say that absence of an extradition treaty does not prevent Afghanistan acting like Muscat which caught and handed Roohullah to Pakistan through Interpol in April 2011.

However, corrupt elements in the Pakistani police ranks have to bear the blame for his escape from their custody in a hospital in Rawalpindi in July 2012.

Police sources describe Roohullah as a foxy criminal. After committing the murder of the aged and respected former advocate general Mohammad Sardar Khan in Islamabad in February 2010 he took refuge with his powerful friends in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

When the issue became hot for his hosts, he crossed into Afghanistan, home to one of his four wives, in May 2010.

In early 2011, Islamabad police traced him to Dubai and he was arrested on an Interpol warrant. But he avoided extradition by signing a bogus cheque which necessitated his trial in Dubai.

While on bail in the case, he fled to neighbouring Muscat. Islamabad police caught up with him there too. He was arrested by Muscat authorities on Interpol warrants and eventually brought to Pakistan in April 2011.

For full one year, the authorities could not decide whether to try him in a civil court or an anti-terrorism court.