Addict owns up to parents’ murder

Arrest over motorbike theft unearths 8-year-old crime

LAHORE:

A drug addict arrested with a stolen motorcycle has confessed to having murdered his father and stepmother eight years ago.

Anti-Vehicle Lifting Staff SP Aftab Phularwan told The Express Tribune that the suspect had fatally hit his parents with a stick a rod and dumped their bodies in a canal and a stream.

He said the police had arrested the suspect, Sarfraz Patras, with a stolen motorcycle.

It was revealed during investigation that the suspect stole various items and sold them to use the money to buy drugs.

When police officials told the suspect that they would raid his home to recover other stolen goods, causing agony and humiliation to his parents in their locality, he revealed that he had murdered his parents by hitting them with a stick in 2014.

After the revelation, the investigation officer took the suspect to SP Aftab Phularwan, who interrogated him.

The suspect reportedly disclosed during the interrogation that he had come to know that his father Inayatullah had received Rs150,000 in retirement dues and kept the amount with his stepmother Basheeran Bibi.

He said he had stolen the money, but his parents suspected that his wife Rano was responsible for the act. His stepmother repeatedly demanded the stolen goods from him.

Sarfraz said he got enraged one day and killed his stepmother by hitting her with a stick, after which he he.

He said his father was worried about the disappearance of his wife.

A month and a half later, the suspect allegedly took his father to Khaliq Nagar by tricking him into bilevig that he would his wife. After reaching the locality, Patras struck his father on the head with an iron rod and killed him.

When the SP sought information about the incident from the Nishtar Colony police station, it was found that a report of the disappearance of the two elders was not registered there.

The police then contacted the suspect’s brother Akbar Khokhar who said his parents had been missing since 2014.

He said his father had retired from the urban transport department and he had been searching for him for eight years.

When the official sought information from the relevant bank, it was revealed that Inayat had not withdrawn his pension since 2014.

The SP said that the suspect had confessed upon questioning that he had dumped his stepmother's body in Dagra Canal in Jhang and his father's corpse in Lahore’s Rohi Nala. He reportedly told the investigators that he was remorseful over killing his parents for money.

After the investigations, a case of murder of both the missing persons was registered in Nishtar Colony police station on the complaint of the suspect's brother. Higher officials awarded certificates to the AVLS team for solving the unreported eight years old case.

In a similarly tragic incident last month, a man allegedly shot dead his parents, a sibling, a nephew and in-laws in the PCSIR Colony and Sheraz Town respectively.

The suspect, Abid, entered his house in PCSIR Colony carrying a prohibited 223-bore automatic rifle and allegedly resorted to indiscriminate firing, killing his father Ghulam Hussain, his mother, Nasreen Bibi, sister Raheela Bibi and nephew Hamayun Khuram.

He did not stop at that. He got into his car and drove straight to Sheraz Town, a few kilometers off his house, where his in-laws lived.

There he re-loaded his gun and opened fire on his in-laws, killing Shagufta Bibi and his father-in-law Aslam.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 15^th, 2022.