LAHORE: The Gujranwala special operation cell of the police, with the help of Interpol, extradited to Pakistan from Oman an assassin and his handler for allegedly killing Muhammad Faisal, a businessman of Gujranwala, last year.

Sufi Ahmed Yar Niazi, the handler, paid him Rs 200,000 for the assassination of Faisal. He fled Pakistan when the Gujranwala police registered a case against them and declared them proclaimed offenders falling in the criminals of the category ‘A’.

According to a police official, they were among the 1,061 criminals who had red warrants issued by Interpol, mostly in murder cases.

The arrests were made by special cell officers Khalid Waria and Faisal Bhutta.

An officer said that the Punjab police have issued red warrants for 1,061 offenders of categories A and B in the cases lodged against them.

Of them, he said, 400 were enlisted in category A which means they were wanted in the heinous crime.

He claimed that Gujranwala was one of the areas from where a large number of criminals fled Pakistan after committing crimes.

“We have so far issued red-warrants for 70 POs wanted in the cases lodged against them in Gujranwala city,” City Police Officer (CPO) Rana Ayyaz Saleem told Dawn.

He said most of them were wanted by the police in murder cases besides some others in financial fraud.

Out of them, he said, 33 fugitive criminals were in the jails of Australia, Oman, Canada, and the US, and the process for their extradition was underway.

He said the special cell has extradited five criminals to Pakistan from abroad in the last 10 days.

Aside from these, he stated that the Interpol process of issuing red warrants for the arrest of 20 more criminals from abroad was nearing completion.

According to the Gujranwala CPO, the police high-ups used to share details of the criminals wanted by Pakistan police with the Ministry of Interior (MoI).

A section called 247 in the MoI Islamabad possessed the immigration details of the Pakistani passengers proceeding abroad. The information shared by the Punjab police helped the authorities search for and identify the criminals, or POs, he said, adding that Interpol used to issue red warrants after obtaining the necessary information.

After completing the legal requirements, he said, the officers concerned would contact the country through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and embassy for the arrest of the wanted criminals.

When the state arrests the wanted criminals, police officers are dispatched to bring them back.

Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the Punjab police department said that the crackdown against the POs operating from abroad has been intensified. Shams, he said, had a notorious criminal record in Gujranwala aside from the businessman’s murder.

Published in Dawn, February 23rd, 2023