Police arrest seven-member gang involved in robbing tourists

IGP Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) Moazzam Jah Ansari has said that police had successfully busted an organized seven-member gang involved in robbing tourists in Malakand Division.

Addressing a press conference along with Special Assistant to CM on Information and Higher Education, Kamran Bangash and member of Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD), Ansari said that the members of the group have successfully been arrested and the stolen goods including mobile phones, cash and other items have been recovered from their possession.

“The money earned from these robberies was used in money laundering and the phones were used in terrorism,” he claimed, adding that these robbers were also involved in smuggling the snatched mobile phones to Afghanistan after changing their IEMIs.

Read 20 more tourists robbed at gunpoint in Swat

“K-P police is ready to ward off any terrorism plot in the province. The robbery incidents happened in Swat and other adjacent areas as on August 5 tourists were robbed at gunpoint in Dir Lower and on August 9 in Swat including members of the minority community. This resulted in widespread panic in the hill stations after which police was put on alert and the CM also took notice of these incidents,” he said, adding that both the cases were similar and police successfully arrested the seven-member group involved in the incidents. He said that four accused were involved in robberies while three others facilitated them by changing the IEMI numbers of the stolen phones.

“These mobiles were then smuggled to Afghanistan and also used in terrorism,” he said, adding that the money snatched from tourists was used in money laundering.

“These accused hail from Peshawar, Mardan and Bajaur who used expensive vehicles to go to busy tourist spots and then robbed people there wearing police caps,” he said, adding that some of the accused spent 12 years in prisons.

Answering a question, IGP said that the events in Afghanistan would impact K-P but police was also ready to thwart any evil designs of the miscreants.

Kamran Bangash on this occasion said that K-P earned Rs40 billion fromtourism as around 700,000 vehicles entered K-P bringing around 2.7 million tourists in total. He assured that in the future there will be no such mishaps befalling national and international tourists.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 18^th, 2021.