Malir gangs: Police rescue kidnapped Hindu doctor

The police team not only managed to rescue Jivamal unharmed, but also caught the four kidnappers.

KARACHI:

Dr Wasdev Jivamal was rescued in an early morning raid in Memon Goth on Thursday.

The doctor was kidnapped on July 30 when he was travelling back to Karachi from Thatta.

Citizens-Police Liaison Committee chief Ahmed Chinoy, who worked with the Anti-Violent Crime Cell to bust the case, said the kidnappers had demanded Rs10 million. “We had been working on this case for the last few weeks and finally got a breakthrough when we received a tip-off that the doctor was being held inside a room in a graveyard.”

A police team was immediately set up and not only managed to rescue Jivamal unharmed, but also caught four men, Abdul Aziz Ghulam, Mohammad Usman, Ghulam Abbas and Abdul Aziz Yusuf, after a shoot-out.

“The four kidnappers are hardened criminals, who operate under the wings of the notorious gangster Sohail Dada from Malir,” Chinoy said, adding that Sohail remains at large.

The Pakistan Medical Association’s Dr Idrees Adhi stressed, however, that doctors are still being threatened. He called for the return of a coordination committee that was set up by the police under the former Inspector General of Police Fayyaz Leghari. “Since the new IG, Wajid Ali Durrani, has taken over, there has been no coordination committee to specifically look into the threats to doctors as it did under Leghari and his deputy SP Khurram Waris.”

Adhi said that doctors have been receiving extortion threats on a daily basis.

According to the PMA, at least 12 doctors have been shot dead in the city between August 2010 and July 2011. In recent times, the worst period for doctors in the city was between 2002 and 2003 when more than 85 of them were killed.



Published in The Express Tribune, September 16^th, 2011.