KARACHI, Nov 4: A 14-year-old kidnap victim was recovered unharmed and his four captors, including a 30-year-old woman, were arrested early on Tuesday morning in Gulistan-i-Jauhar, police said.
Talha Siddiqui was kidnapped a little after midnight on Nov 2 when he with his father, Nafees Ahmed Siddiqui, was driving back to his Gulshan-i-Iqbal residence after visiting a nearby food outlet.
They said a joint team of the Citizens-Police Liaison Committee (CPLC) and the Anti-violent Crime Cell (AVCC) raided the kidnappers’ hideout after conducting a thorough probe into the matter.
The police said the kidnapping was masterminded by Salman Qureshi, a 35-year-old real estate broker. The victim’s father, a marine engineer, had purchased two plots for Rs10 million through him.
The other suspects were identified as Laiba, Imran Ahsan alias Sunny and Zubair.
CPLC chief Sharfuddin Memon told Dawn that the gang was also involved in the kidnapping of a builder’s son, Khurrum Javed, who was released on Oct 26 on the payment of Rs1 million as ransom. “We were already working on some clues in Khurrum’s kidnapping case and got a bit closer to the kidnappers when they kidnapped Talha,” he added.
Nafees Siddiqui, father of three, told Dawn that Talha was his only son and eldest among the children. “To me, my family, he’s born again,” he said.
Mr Siddiqui said the quick recovery of his son, a class X student, was the result of the close coordination between the CPLC and the AVCC.
The victim’s father, who has been on vacation for the past three months, said he was being driven home when at around 12.30am a Suzuki Alto intercepted their car near Farooqi Masjid.
“Two of the occupants got down and dragged Talha from the driving seat, shoved him into their car at gunpoint and drove away,” he said.He said the kidnappers called at his landline phone through his son’s cellular phone after half an hour and demanded Rs25 million.
AVCC chief SSP Farooq Awan told Dawn that Salman Qureshi was the gang leader, who masterminded the kidnapping. He said the restaurant the victim and his father visited before the kidnapping belonged to a close relative of theirs. “They visited the restaurant almost daily to spend some leisure time there,” he said.
He said the woman suspect was a divorcee with a four-year-old son. “She is a close friend of Salman who also bought her a car,” he added.
The police officer said the gang leader had kept the victim in a rented house.
Young man shot dead
A 26-year-old man was shot dead near his house in Bhutto Nagar, a shantytown in Landhi.
The police said the victim, Rehan Aziz, son of Abdul Aziz, had left his house in the small hours of Tuesday to buy cigarettes when unknown culprits shot him dead.
The body was shifted to the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre for a postmortem examination.
Sources at the hospital’s medico-legal section told Dawn that the victim was shot with a single bullet to his head from a point-blank range as the bullet pierced the skull.
The police said the victim was jobless since he returned from Dubai, where he worked as a labourer.
The police registered a murder case against unknown culprits on the complaint of the victim’s brother, Farhan Aziz.
The police said the incident seemed motivated by personal enmity.
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