Cops caught napping: Carjackers make daring escape from lock-up

Suspects cut iron bars and scaled a wall without anyone noticing.

ISLAMABAD: A four-member carjacking gang showed that their expertise goes beyond car locks after breaking out of Koral Police Station’s lockup on Friday.

The quartet managed to cut the bars of the lockup gate and escaped from the police station before dawn on Friday. “It happened between 4am-6am. The police officials responsible for the negligence have been booked and arrested,” said Koral Police Station House Officer Sajjad Bukhari.

The six police officials — the duty officer, Assistant Sub-Inspector (ASI) Ghulam Jillani, investigation officer ASI Abdul Qadir, and four constables — were booked for negligence and dereliction of duty.

Police said investigations were underway to ascertain if the police officials on duty at the time of the incident were simply negligent or if they were complicit.

“There have been incidents of this nature in the past as well,” said a police official, adding that the duty officer, the night moharrar and other officials were literally sleeping at the time of incident.

The suspects managed to acquire an unidentified cutting instrument with which they cut one of the bars of the lockup gate. After exiting the lockup, they jumped the walls of the police station. Police were still investigating how the group got hold of a cutting instrument and managed to jump the high walls.

“These four carjackers were notorious professional criminals and were wanted in many cases. We could have obtained valuable information from them to help recover stolen cars and other valuables,” said a police official.

Another police official who did not want to be named said it is the norm to find night moharrars and night duty officers asleep on the job. “It is prevalent in every police station of the city,” he added.

It was also possible that the guards and other police officials present at the station were enjoying a nap and the suspects used it to their advantage, said the police official.

Shah Wali, Noorul Rehman and Jan Agha, natives of Afghanistan, and Ali Razzaq, a resident of Bagh, were arrested last Wednesday with two others by the Koral police.

They were given in physical remand of the police for three days by the district court on Thursday. The police wanted to investigate the carjackers for recovery of stolen vehicles before sending them to jail.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 24^th, 2012.