Man killed for his cellphone in Islamabad

Sim card helps track down killers of 26-year-old Junaid Hafiz.

ISLAMABAD: New Year’s eve was the last time anyone heard from him. He had gone out for dinner with a friend. But before the dawn of 2011, his body was brought home.

Junaid Hafiz, 26, a resident of sector G-7/1, was shot in his stomach in a dark alley near his home. The motive, his cellphone.

‘By the time he was shifted to Polyclinic hospital, Hafiz was almost dead. He had lost too much blood’ said a police official. Hafiz left behind a widow and two children. His family told the police that he was visiting a friend after a long time. “They had walked to a restaurant in Blue Area not too far from our house,” Balqis, the widow of the deceased, told the police. A while later, neighbours heard a gunshot and found Hafiz bleeding in the street. He was rushed to the hospital but it was too late.

“Had the blood not entered his stomach, his life could have been saved,” said a police official. Hafiz died within a few minutes of arriving at the hospital before he could be given any treatment.

Kamran, his friend, was under scrutiny as a suspect. But he had not fled and helped describe the circumstances before the murder took place.

“We had dinner together at a restaurant and I had left him at the corner of the street and returned home,” he told the police.

Hafiz’s cellphone was missing and there were signs of resistance evident from his clothing and the site of the incident.

There were, however, no witnesses. The police suspected that Hafiz was shot while resisting a cellphone snatching attempt.

“After shooting him, the snatchers escaped smoothly. They took away his cellphone and wallet,” said the Aabpara police station investigation officer Akram Cheema.

The snatched cellphone became the missing piece of the puzzle. Tracker systems confirmed the cellphone had been used and police were led to an area in Islamabad where it was located. “If a sim card is present in the cell phone, it can easily be traced with the help of the locator even if it remains switched off,” said a police official.

The person in possession of the cellphone was arrested. But he was not involved in the snatching.

“He had purchased the phone from a shop,” said the investigation officer. Police used their sources to identify certain mobile-snatchers and were finally able to nab one of the suspects of the murder-after-robbery.

“He confessed to the shooting of Hafiz and selling the phone to a shop,” said a police official.

Sunil James’s arrest led to the arrest of his accomplice Adnan Maseeh alias Ladu who confessed to their crime in police custody.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 29^th,  2011.