Islamabad: Kidnapped young man recovered after 3 months

Islamabad: The Islamabad Police have recovered 25-year-old Ali Waqar, son of leading surgeon Dr. Rakhshanda Rasheed, from Landikotal. The young man was kidnapped for ransom on April 15 this year from Sector F-10/2.

The captors, belonging to Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP), demanded Rs100 million as ransom for the release of Ali Waqar and kept him in their custody for three months, police sources said. According to sources, the captors initially confined the young man in their hideout at Dhoke Paracha in Islamabad and later shifted him to a locality near Hayatabad and Landikotal after an initial bargaining with his family.

Inspector General of Police (IGP) Bani Ameen, when contacted for his comments, confirming the report. He termed it a great achievement of the Islamabad Police and said that the kidnapped young man has been handed over to his parents.

Top officers of the Islamabad Police, including IGP and SSP, supervised the case, but two inspectors, Khalid Awan (former SHO of the Shalimar Police Station) and Mehboob Ahmad (SHO of the Shalimar Police Station), as well as the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Police played a vital role in the recovery of the Ali Waqar, police sources said.

Police sources said that in the beginning, the young man’s family didn’t disclose the case to police and kept bargaining with the captors for over a week. However the Islamabad Police took up the case after the young man’s family got registered a complaint. During the course of investigation, police traced the hideout of the captors in Dhoke Paracha. In a late night operation on April 29, police gunned down a captor and arrested two others, but failed to recover Ali Waqar, as the arrested captors claimed that he was already shifted to the Tribal Areas.

After the failed raid, top police officers were hopeless about the life of the kidnapped young man, but later the people engaged in the investigation of the case claimed supporting evidence that Ali Waqar was alive and the process of bargaining was going on through bigwigs of the Tribal Areas.

Two family drivers — Siraj Khan and Jamal Khan — were among the captors, the people engaged in the investigation of the case disclosed, adding that one of them was killed and the other was arrested.

The captors insisted on their demand and said that they would not settle for anything less than Rs100 million. During the bargaining process, the captors terrorised the family that they would take the young man to Waziristan if they failed to meet their demand.

According to information, a gang of captors, including Siraj Khan, Jehangir Khan, Akhtar, Jamal Khan and others kidnapped Ali Waqar, a resident of House no. 543, Service Road, F-10/2, on April 15 and confined him in a hideout at Dhoke Paracha located in the jurisdiction of Golra Police Station.

A day after the kidnapping, the captors contacted Dr. Rakhshanda Rasheed (mother) and Waqar Zikria (father), chief executive officer of a private limited company, and demanded Rs100 million as ransom, an investigation officer told this correspondent. He said that the captors refused to bargain further, threatening that they would not settle for less than Rs100 million and they would shift the young man to the Tribal Areas if they failed to provide the demanded amount as ransom.

Police said that Waqar Zikria lodged a complaint after a few days of the occurrence with the Shalimar Police and police registered an FIR under Section 365-A of the PPC and started investigation.

It was decided in a high-level meeting of police officers to tackle the case carefully to safe the life of the kidnapped young man and arrest the culprits.

Following the plan, the SP (Sadar Zone) constituted a team under supervision of Shalimar Police Station SHO Inspector Khalid Awan, who got clue about a man identified as Akhtar Hussain, police sources maintained.

During investigation, the suspect confessed that he was involved in the kidnapping Ali Waqar for ransom and told police that the victim was detained in a house at Dhoke Paracha. He also disclosed that the victim was detained in the house by his accomplices — Siraj Khan, Jehangir Khan and Jamal Khan.

In the light of the information, a raiding team was constituted under the supervision of SHO Khalid Awan, police sources said. As the team raided the hideout at Dhoke Paracha, the captors, refusing to surrender, opened fire on the police team and warned it that they had huge quantity of arms and ammunition and they would fight till the last bullet, a member of the raiding team told ‘The News.’ He added that they later went into the basement of the hideout and started indiscriminate firing on police.

The police team warned the criminals to surrender but they refused to do so and kept on shooting, he said, adding that the police team retaliated which resulted in injury to one of the kidnappers identified as Siraj Khan.

Later, police arrested three kidnappers, including the injured, and recovered three pistols from them. The injured was shifted to the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) where he expired during surgery.

During investigation, Jehangir Khan and Jamal Khan told police that the young man had been shifted to Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. It was also revealed that Siraj Khan, a driver of the family, planned the kidnapping for ransom with the help of Jamal Khan, the other driver of Waqar Zikria, and later included others in the kidnapping episode.

The original article can be found at The News.

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