KARACHI: Gul Munir, one of the two witnesses arrested a day after Awais Ali Shah had been kidnapped by four armed men outside a supermarket in Clifton, made it back to work on Thursday.

Even after being released by the police, the guard was hesitant to speak to the media and requested not to be quoted. The reason for his hesitance, according to other security guards deputed outside the supermarket, is the fact that another eyewitness arrested with him, Manzoor Khan, is still in police custody.

A senior police officer in Clifton said: “Contradictory statements by eyewitnesses made it difficult to ascertain facts in an already complicated case.” However, a single consistent thread in all the statements recorded by three eyewitnesses so far is the description of the armed kidnappers that he said “is different from the Clifton police’s initial version”. According to the statements recorded by the three eyewitnesses, Gul Munir, Manzoor Khan and another security guard known so far by his alias Qari, with the Clifton police, “four armed men, dressed in white shalwar kameez, with police caps on their heads and black cloth wrapped around half of their faces, abducted Awais Ali Shah outside the supermarket in the afternoon.” The eyewitnesses said the men were holding Kalashinkovs and pistols. They added that most onlookers assumed that the police were making an arrest that’s why they didn’t make any effort to intervene.

A senior official at the Agha’s Supermarket said: “Considering the kind of customers, we mostly receive, we had requested the Clifton police for added security a year back. But we were informed that there is a shortage of staff at their police station.”

Instead the Clifton police sent a policeman on a motorbike to patrol the area during the evening though the market had hired private security guards, he said.

Following the incident, an ASI and four police guards were deputed in the car park outside the store along with a Pakistan Rangers mobile patrolling the area every hour, said the official. At the same time, he added, three new security guards had replaced the older ones since June 25.

Advocate Awais Ali Shah, son of Sindh High Court Chief Justice Sajjad Ali Shah, was abducted by armed men in broad daylight in the busy Clifton area on June 20.

Published in Dawn, July 1st, 2016