RAHIM YAR KHAN: Robbers in Sindh allegedly killed a resident of Sadiqabad on Monday after his family failed to pay the ransom and threw his body in the Katcha area of Shikarpur district.

Reports said Tahir Mehmood, a property dealer from Sadiqabad, was lured by a honey trap and kidnapped by a dacoit gang from Shikarpur in September. Sadiqabad city police registered a case on the complaint of his son Hanzala Tahir.

The robbers demanded a ransom of Rs10 million for Mehmood’s release. Despite the family’s efforts to negotiate via phone calls, the kidnappers gave a final ultimatum a few days ago, threatening to kill Mehmood and dump his body in the Indus if the ransom was not paid. After the deadline passed, the gangsters killed Mehmood and threw his body into the river in the Garhi Taighu area of Shikarpur.

Locals said PPP MPA Mumtaz Chang contacted the Sindh IG to recover Mehmood’s body and two others from Sadiqabad who were also kidnapped by dacoits in Sindh on last Thursday.

Sindh police claim autopsy shows man died of cardiac arrest

Mehmood’s funeral prayers will be held on Wednesday (today) at 8am in Sadiqabad’s Central Eidgah.

In another case, two residents of Sadiqabad, Asif Hussain and Muhammad Bilal, have been missing for the last five days. According to Shaukat, a relative of Asif, both men were last seen when they went to deliver clothes to Bilal’s brother at a restaurant. Later, they traveled to meet a friend near Chungi No. 10, after which their phones were powered off. Their families have since registered a kidnapping complaint with the police.

Shaukat said Asif’s father received a call from the dacoits demanding cell phone easy load of Rs2,000 and repeated the load demand the next day. The kidnappers then asked for Rs5 million for Asif’s release and Rs10m for Bilal. The dacoits have since threatened to kill the abductees if the ransom is not paid within four hours.

Shikarpur SSP Shahzeb Chachar said the Sindh police recovered Tahir Mehmood’s body from a rural area near the Indus. He said the post-mortem report indicated Mehmood died of a heart attack, with no signs of torture.

Regarding the two missing men, Asif and Bilal, Chachar said their location was traced to the Punjab area near Bhong, not Sindh.

A spokesperson for the RYK police said the missing abductees were not in Rahim Yar Khan but in the Rajanpur district. He claimed that the RYK police saved 520 people from honey trap by stopping them at check points.

Published in Dawn, October 2nd, 2024