“Under the circumstances, there was nothing I could do but stop,” he said. “As soon as I stopped the car they injected me with something. I was alone in the dark when I woke up.” The chief of the Anti-Violent Crime Cell (AVCC) shared the details of Shahbaz’s recovery at a press conference on Friday evening.
According to the AVCC chief, SP Ghulam Subhani, Shahbaz was kidnapped by the same group that abducted a professor of Hamdard University, Iftikhar Abidi, and two businessmen, who were recovered on Wednesday. Four members of the kidnapping gang were also arrested in the raid and led the police to Shahbaz. However, unfortunately the kidnappers escaped arrest.
Shahbaz said that he was also kept in Balochistan for some time. “Their attitude with me was alright,” said Shahbaz. “They gave me food thrice a day - tea and biscuits for breakfast, daal roti, rice or sweet parathas for lunch and dinner. Once when I got diarrhoea they even got me medicines.”
Subhani said that the gang was involved in at least 30 kidnappings in Karachi alone and more cases in other cities. He said that the group mainly worked from Hub and Sakran, in Balochistan, where they kept the victims in rest houses. “Mashooq Brohi was the founder of the gang,” said Subhani. “But since his death three to four years ago, a man named Dr Ghafoor has been running operations.”
The group consists of over a dozen members active in Gulshan-e-Hadeed, Gulshan-e-Maymar, Gadap Town, the Super Highway, the National Highway and Surjani in Karachi. “The group does not monitor its victims,” Subhani said. “They choose their victims if they see an expensive mobile phone or a nice car, and then take him to Balochistan.” He said that four to five more people were still being held by the gang in Balochistan and the AVCC is cooperating with Citizens-Police Liaison Committee to find them.
Shahbaz ran the family’s iron business and is the eldest brother. Shahbaz’s family said that the kidnappers contacted the family at least 10 times to demand a ransom of Rs5 million. “They threatened to kill him on every phone call,” said Bilal, the younger brother. “We had lost hope that he would return home because it was very difficult to for us to arrange such a large amount. But thank God, both, my brother and our money are safe.”
Published in The Express Tribune, December 3rd, 2011.
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Kidnapping is business as usual in outskirts of Karachi.