Mistaken identities: Red Crescent and not Red Cross car snatched

Vehicle, and not ambulance, was taken at gunpoint in Gulshan-e-Iqbal.

KARACHI:

The ‘Red Cross’ and the ‘Red Crescent’ got mixed up on Thursday when a vehicle was reported as snatched in Karachi. 

Certain sections of the media reported that an International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) ambulance was taken, but it was in fact a vehicle belonging to the local Pakistan Red Crescent Society.

Peter Lick, who heads the ICRC Karachi office, told The Express Tribune that all reports of the alleged abduction of their vehicle were “absolutely inaccurate and irresponsible.” Lick said that since Friday morning, they’ve been accounting for all of their vehicles, including ambulances. “All of our vehicles have been accounted for and no First Information Report has been filed on our behalf by any of our office bearers or staffers,” Lick clarified.

This was further corroborated by DSP Irfan Zaman of the Anti-Car Lifting Cell. He said that no vehicle belonging to an international organisation or in fact any ambulance whatsoever was snatched on Thursday night.

However, Zaman clarified that a 2009 model double-cabin Vigo belonging to a local humanitarian organisation, the Pakistan Red Crescent Society (PRCS), was snatched at around midnight from Gulshan-e-Iqbal’s 13-D area.

PRCS provincial secretary Kanwar Waseem told The Express Tribune that in fact, the vehicle in question was not an ambulance at all. “I know this because I was travelling in that car,” he said. The double cabin was actually in Gulshan-e-Iqbal’s 13-D area to drop Waseem home after a late night dinner.

According to Waseem, after he was dropped, the driver of the vehicle was stopped by two armed men. “They snatched our organisation’s car, which was followed closely by accomplices of the suspect in another car.”

Police on Friday said that they are having a hard time tracing the PRCS vehicle since no tracker device was fitted. Waseem confirmed that no such device had been installed.

However, progress has been made into the case as one of the suspects involved has been identified from a list of suspects available with the police.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 22^nd, 2011.