Heavy price: Murdered in the cold

Trapped by his lust, killed for his car.

ISLAMABAD: A Dhok Kashmirian neighbourhood went numb after discovering a days-old body in a water supply tank. Thinking they had been using water from this tank, everyone present at the scene shuddered. They avoided looking at the face as it was swollen beyond recognition. The residents were certain he was not from the locality.

Chief of the nearby police station was then called and the body removed.

Who was he, where did he come from, the police was clueless. The date of this incident was January 3, 2011.

It was one of those chilly nights of December and Ibrar Hussain did not want to go out, but the thought of a girl was tempting. His friends Tariq and Faisal called and said, “We have arranged a call girl for tonight and you are invited.” The bait was too attractive for Hussain to ignore.

He was a chauffer at a house and was a confidant of his landlord too. The owner of the car would not mind the absence of one of his vehicles for a few hours.

The next step, Hussain picked up Faisal and Tariq. ‘We have taken this house on rent in Mehrabadia especially for tonight,’ he was told. “The girl is also coming,” they said.

In the meantime, they started enticing him to help kidnap his landlord for ransom but the man rejected the idea. It was discussed earlier as well and Hussain had firmly opposed it.

The following day on December 27, 2010, Akbar Hussain was worried for his son Ibrar. He was missing from his landlord’s house with his Honda City car since the previous night. Ibrar had last informed his family about going to sector F-12. Since then, his cell phone was not responding which worried Akbar the most.

However, his anxiety doubled when he received a call from an anonymous number demanding Rs1 million in ransom for the release of his son. The caller claimed he was in their custody.

The poor man started efforts to arrange for the money but could not get more than quarter of a million. Akbar went suspicious when the caller did not let him hear his son’s voice on the phone. The anonymous caller even threatened to kill Ibrar.

Akbar, a resident of Fauji Colony Pirwadhai, first went to his neighbourhood police. Based on his last location, the Pirwadhai referred him to Shalimar Police station.

After short deliberation, the case of kidnapping for ransom was registered in the Shalimar police station on January 2 this year.

The next day, the police were able to nab two suspects through the call records of the cell number which was being used by the anonymous kidnappers. The arrested men confessed of having committed the crime

On further interrogation, they told the police that Ibrar was no longer alive since they had killed him on December 27, the day after he went missing.

The suspects were later identified as Faisal and Tariq, the same friends who had invited him for spending a night.

Acting upon the information provided by them, the police was led to the same dead body which was recovered from Dhok Kashmirian. Akbar Hussain and his family identified Ibrar’s body that was recovered by the Golra Police from a water tank in Model Town, Dhok Kashmirian.

During the police interrogation, the suspects also revealed that they had sold the stolen car for Rs20,000 to a black market dealer in Charsadda District of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, the native town of Tariq. His other accomplice Faisal was from Gujranwala.

They had strangulated Ibrar to death with the help of a rope, bundled his body into the rear of the city car and thrown it into a water tank in Dhok Kashmirian. Soon after killing him they planned to befool Ibrar’s father for some extra money and demanded ransom from him.

The Golra police are now investigating further to recover the car and collecting more evidence against the suspects. A murder case has been registered against them.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 8^th, 2011.