KARACHI: Police on Friday formally booked and arrested the SHO of the Zaman Town police station for his alleged involvement in robbing a trader of over Rs11 million.

They claimed to have recovered more than Rs5m of the looted cash from his possession.

SSP-East (Investigation) Ameer Saud Magsi said that after receiving a complaint Zaman Town SHO Rao Rafiq and two other policemen were detained for questioning.

During grilling, it was transpired that the SHO, his team and his informer were involved in illegally detaining the trader and looting his cash, the SSP said, adding that concerted efforts were underway to arrest the absconder informer and recover remaining cash from him.

SSP claims to have recovered half of the looted money

The officer said that SHO’s informer Zafar told him about the movement of a huge amount of cash by the trader. Acting on the tip-off the SHO along with his team picked up the trader on Lyari Expressway near Sohrab Goth and snatched Rs11,800,000 from him, he added.

However, a police patrol of the East zone arrived there and asked the Zaman Town police as to why they were in the area which was not in their jurisdiction. They brought them to the Sachal police station when the policemen did not give any satisfactory response, the SSP said.

The trader, identified as Muhammad Khan, arrived at the Sachal police station and lodged an FIR against policemen on charges of dacoity and habeas corpus.

In the FIR, registered under sections 395 (punishment for dacoity) and 342 (wrongful confinement) of the Pakistan Penal Code, he stated that he, his partner Faisal and some others were travelling in two separate cars, carrying Rs11,800,000 cash in three bags.

They were on their way to his (the complainant’s) home in Naval Colony from Superhighway via Lyari Expressway when at around 4:20am on March 11, eight-nine policemen wearing uniforms and one in plain clothes in a police mobile and a silver-colour car stopped them at the junction of toll plaza on Lyari Expressway.

The uniformed policemen asked the complainant and others to come out from their cars, snatched their cell phones and started searching their vehicles. They locked the car of his partner Faisal, and snatched its key. Then they forcibly put him (the complainant) in his car’s backseat and one of the policemen held him at gunpoint, took him in his own car and left his partners and others there.

The complainant said the policemen blindfolded him and travelled for one-and-a-half hours in the city. Then, they stopped the car, snatched the cash and fled after locking him inside his vehicle. Later, some passers-by informed him that he was in North Nazimabad.

The businessman said that as the policemen did not take away his cell phone, he called his friends there and also obtained CCTV footage from the spot. The complainant said the uniformed policemen took away the cash in their car.

Published in Dawn, March 16th, 2024