ISLAMABAD: A police official has been arrested for extorting a shopkeeper, while another police official and two others involved in the incident are still at large.

Police said on Saturday that two people visited a shop in E-11 and asked for gutka. Although selling gutka is prohibited, they were sold the product at which point two police officials entered the store and questioned them.

The shopkeeper was then asked to come to the police station in a police vehicle. The other two people followed the police vehicle in a separate car.

The police vehicle stopped on a D-12 service road and the police officials allegedly asked the shopkeeper to settle the matter with the other two men, who they said were from the media.

The two ‘media professionals’ asked the shopkeeper for Rs25,000, and then reduced that to Rs20,000 at the police officials’ request, police said. They then took the shopkeeper to E-11 where he withdrew Rs20,000 in cash from an ATM and gave the money to the two men.

The police officials also demanded Rs10,000 from the shopkeeper. The shopkeeper paid the police Rs5,600.

The shopkeeper later lodged a complaint with the Golra police and a case was registered against the four suspects.

The police have arrested one of the police officials, a head constable who was produced in the court of the magistrate and remanded into police custody. The other three suspects have not yet been identified, police said, but efforts to obtain their information are ongoing.

It has not yet been established whether the two other individuals involved were media professionals or impersonators.

Published in Dawn, February 2nd, 2020