Gruesome discovery: Another mutilated body dumped in Sector I-14

Officials stumped as third body found in the capital in a week

ISLAMABAD: The grisly trend of bodies turning up by the capital’s roadsides does not seem to be letting up as yet  with another unidentified body  found by police in  Sector I-14 on Friday.

This is the third such body to be dumped in Islamabad in a week’s time with police clueless about the culprits.

Officials said that the body, which appeared to be of a man aged between 55 and 60 years, was found in the wilderness near the Haji Camp in I-14, within the jurisdiction of Noon Police Station.

Noon SHO  Abdus Sattar Shah  told The Express Tribune on Friday that they could not identify the man visually since his face had been mutilated. However, Shah said they have reached out to the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) to identify the man through his fingerprints.

The officer further said that the body bore injury marks to his head suggesting that he could have been tortured before his death. While his body had been shifted to the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) on Friday for a post-mortem, results of the examination were not immediately available.

Officials suspect that the man was possibly murdered somewhere else before being dumped in I-14.

“There are many uninhabited areas within our jurisdiction. It is quite possible that the man was killed somewhere else and dumped here,” Shah said.

Friday’s case is nearly identical to one last week when on September 24 the mutilated remains of a 50-year-old man wrapped in a bag was found nearby in Sector I-14-A. That body too bore injury marks on the face and heads while the face had been mutilated. Police have so far been unable to identify that victim either.

A day later on September 25, police discovered  the body of a 26-year-old woman stuffed inside a bag and dumped near Sabzi Mandi. Officials said surveillance footage showed a taxi leaving the scene after dropping the bag near a bus stand along the IJ Principal Road. While the police were able to identify the victim and trace her family, they have not had much luck in finding the taxi or the culprits.

Apart from these three incidents, police are investigating at least two other cases of bodies dumped around the capital.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 1^st, 2016.