Fraud gone wrong: Five suspects remanded into police custody

Police presented a 'fraudster' and four CTD personnel before the judge, seeking their physical remand to investigate

KARACHI: The anti-terrorism courts' administrative judge remanded on Tuesday a suspected fraudster and four policemen allegedly involved in the killing of a young man in a drive-by shooting.

The police presented the 'fraudster', identified as Mirza Dilnawaz Baig, and four Counter Terrorism Department personnel, identified as Saeed Ahmed, Rashid Ali, Nadim Khan and Kaleemullah, before the judge and sought their physical remand to investigate the case.

Abrar, 28, was shot dead by the said policemen after they opened indiscriminate fire on a vehicle apparently finding some suspicious activity going on in it on Monday.

According to the remand report, Abrar, along with his two friends Naqash and Sheharyar, had gone to Saddar on Sunday night to sell his Samsung Galaxy Note 4 Edge to a prospective buyer, Baig, whom he got in touch with on advertising website Olx.com.

Baig arrived at the mentioned spot in a Honda Civic Reborn and after taking the cell phone from Abrar handed him over two prize bonds, each of Rs15,000, in return and tried to sped away, the report read.

Abrar clung on to the speeding vehicle from an opened back seat window and fell inside when he got injured after hitting another vehicle on the way, the report added. The two car occupants were scuffling with each other over the cell phone as Abrar did not want the prize bonds.

Noticing the activity in the vehicle, four police personnel in plain clothes signaled the car to stop and chased it, the report said, and opened fire on it near the Habib Bank branch in Sindhi Muslim Cooperative Housing Society. Both the occupants sustained bullet wounds, however, Abrar succumbed to his wounds, it added.

The judge, accepting the report, sent the five suspects in police custody on two weeks physical remand and sought a progress report from the investigation officer at next hearing.

Meanwhile, the four accused personnel in their statement claim that Ahmed was driving the police van when they noticed some suspicious activity in the vehicle. They then chased the vehicle and near Sindhi Muslim roundabout, Kaleemullah opened fire on it with his official sub-machine gun.

When they could not find any weapon from the occupants, they got worried and on the advice of Ali and Khan left the scene, sources quoted them as narrating the scene.

A case is registered under sections 302 (premeditated murder), 324 (attempted murder), 114 (abetting a crime), 34 (common intention) of the Pakistan Penal Code, read with Section 7 of the Anti-Terrorism Act at the Ferozabad police station against the five accused.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 13^th, 2016.