Kidnapped baby and father’s business rescued

Parents thought someone was playing a joke on them.

KARACHI:

The authorities have managed to rescue a baby boy and a young man from separate kidnappers on Sunday.

The Anti-Violent Crime Cell (AVCC) and Citizens-Police Liaison Committee (CPLC) carried out a raid near Singer Chowrangi, Korangi, and found two-and-a-half-year-old MRH who was kidnapped on January 16. His family said that they were unaware of the kidnapping and thought that the baby had gone missing while playing in the neighbourhood. Although the kidnappers made a ransom call and asked for Rs150,000, they could not believe it and thought it was a joke.

“We were unprepared to believe that this had happened because we are poor people. Only rich people get kidnapped,” said the baby’s father HH. “They asked us to come to a mosque and look at the latest photographs of our baby. We went to the mosque and saw the evidence and knew it was not a lie.” HH runs a small business and said that the kidnappers threatened to sell his son for one million rupees if they failed to give the ransom money. He said that they collected Rs25,000 from the neighbourhood and contacted the police out of desperation.

CPLC chief Ahmed Chinoy and AVCC chief SP Ghulam Subhani addressed a joint press conference and said that they had managed to locate the kidnappers’ hideout in Nusrat Colony. They were identified as Noor Hakeem and Abdul Shakoor. The police seized two TT pistols from them.

Chinoy said that the investigators did not receive any reliable information about the gang. He added that they could not confirm if the kidnappers were really planning to sell the boy but said that it was possible it was just a pressure tactic.

In an unrelated case, a 34-year-old man was released by another group of kidnappers without ransom. The AVCC and CPLC said the kidnappers let him go because of the pressure they were putting on them.

SP Subhani said the man used to run a construction business and was kidnapped on December 21. The kidnappers asked for Rs20 million in ransom and kept him hidden in rural Sindh.

The relieved survivor said that the kidnappers had threatened to kill him if the ransom was not paid. He added that they hit him twice and used to say that his family did not want to pay the ransom. He did not where he was as he was kept chained in an empty room. He said that he woke up in that room after they kidnapped him and injected him with something. He added that they just dropped him off at Ghaggar Phattak with Rs1,000 for a ride back home.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 22^nd, 2012.