Rawalpindi police bust child kidnapping ring

Court remands four alleged kidnappers to police custody for five days

RAWALPINDI: The Rawalpindi police announced on Saturday that they have arrested four people who are suspected to have abducted a number of young children from the city and then demanded ransom from their parents.

The suspects were later produced before an anti-terror court which granted police their physical remand for five days.

The arrest of the alleged gang of kidnappers was announced by Rawalpindi City Police Officer Abbas Ahsan during a news briefing at the Rawalpindi Police Lines on Saturday.



CPO Ahsan said that four young children, between four and seven years-of-age, had been abducted from different areas falling within the remits of the Pir Wadhai police station in Rawalpindi.

He added that the suspects allegedly lured the children by offering them candies or snacks and then abduct them in rickshaws or on motorbikes.

The children were then taken to hideouts in different locations. Meanwhile, the kidnappers called the parents of the abducted children who were then told to pay up to Rs200,000 as ransom.

Even though these children hailed from poor families, their parents managed to pay the ransom to secure the release of their kids.

Once the kidnappers had received their money, they used to release the kids.

However, CPO Ahsan said that their investigations into the case led them to Muhammad Ajmal and three others including Muhammad Kamran, Shah Mir and Ali Shah. Two months after they started kidnapping children, CPO Ahsan said that they had managed to catch the kidnappers.

The police officer claimed that Ajmal was the gang leader. Moreover, they had recovered Rs150,000 in ransom money, a rickshaw, motorbike and two mobile phones from their possession.

CPO Abbas, who had presented the four alleged kidnappers during the news conference with shawls wrapped around their heads to hide their faces, claimed that the kidnappers have confessed their crimes during their initial investigation and that they had been booked for kidnapping for ransom.



Police granted custody

The four suspects were presented before a special anti-terrorism court on Saturday.

Police officers from the Pir Wadhai police station told the court that the suspects were allegedly involved in kidnapping children and that they had allegedly confessed to their crime during initial questioning.

The officers urged the court to grant them physical custody of the suspects so that they can continue their investigations. The court granted five days physical remand of the suspects in police custody.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 28^th, 2018.