Satellite Town resident Ali Salman left his house to play videogames on August 24 but never returned home. Ali’s father Ghulam Zakariya kept looking for him and on failing to find him by the next morning he lodged an FIR with the local police. Zakariya went to the videogame arcade where his son said he had gone and inquired into his whereabouts.
His son’s friends said that he left the arcade with a boy named Hafiz Usman on a motorbike when they last saw him. Zakariya tried to find Usman but was unable to locate the boy’s whereabouts. Ali’s mother, Rifat Bano told the police that the she recalled her son making plans with his friend using her cell phone and the police traced the boy by tracking his number. When Zakariya called the number, Usman hung up on him and switched off his cell phone.
Zakariya told the police about his suspicions and police officials raided Usman’s home and arrested him. “I called his number for hours after he initially hung up on me but his phone was switched off,” Zakariya said. Usman initially denied all knowledge regarding Ali Salman’s whereabouts but later confessed to having murdered him. “He told the police that he had never even met our son but when we said that we had known him for years he was quiet,” Zakariya said.
A case was registered against Usman under Section 364 of Pakistan Penal Code which deals with “Kidnapping or abducting in order to murder”. He revealed that he had borrowed Rs1,500 from Ali Salman and the night when they met Salman had called him demanding his money back. Usman had been a class fellow of Salman and they often met at the video arcade. Usman said that when Salman reached the videogame center he asked him to accompany him to his house so he could return the money. “I asked him to come home with me so I could return the money and he got on my bike. I planned to kill him once I got home,” Usman said, adding that when the boys reached Usman’s house in Feroze Wala he gave Salman a poisoned soft drink and he was rendered unconscious.
Usman said that after Salman fell unconscious, he and his relative slit his throat, removed his clothes and threw his body into a nearby canal, Chichar Wali Nehar. “We washed away all the blood in our kitchen and a week after the incident we didn’t think anyone noticed,” Usman said. Some seven days after the incident, the body was discovered by some swimmers in a link canal near Muridke.
The men reported the incident in the Sadar Police Station and the body was buried as an unidentified body. After Usman confessed his crime, Zakariya contacted the Muridke police and requested that the body be excavated . Police officials complied with the family’s request and Ali Salman’s body was returned to his family on Saturday.
“We identified the boy and handed his body over to his relatives after following legal procedure,” Muridke district superintendent police (DSP) Mian Akram told The Express Tribune.
Accused Usman and his accomplice Muhammad Tayab are in police custody and will be presented before the court on Monday. Zakariya, says he wants justice and the murderers of his son should be forced to pay for their crimes.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 6th, 2010.
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