Nabbed: Three suspected extortionists arrested from capital

The trio claim affiliation with Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan.

ISLAMABAD:

The Crime Investigation Department (CID) of the capital’s police on Friday arrested three suspects claiming to be members of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) for their involvement in extortion.

The CID received a tip-off that a group of extortionists, claiming to be affiliated with the TTP was harassing businessmen in the twin cities and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) in order to arrange finances for their organisation, said a police official, requesting his name be withheld. The official added that the accused sent threatening letters on the TTP letterhead and phone calls from Waziristan to various individuals were traced to this group.



“The police launched a special operation to trace and arrest them,” he said. The latest techniques such as geo-fencing and digital data analysis were employed to nab the trio, whose names are Malik Alam Khan Wazir, Mohammad Tahir and Mukammal.

The official said that the suspects were working as contractors in Murree and Islamabad. The accused would dropped leaflets with a cell phone number at people’s houses asking for sums of up to Rs6.5 million, he added. “The group had threatened factory owners in K-P, hotel owners in Murree and had chalked out plans to extort money from businessmen in Rawalpindi and Islamabad.”



The police recovered three pistols and a list of names of persons they were planning to ask for extortion from their possession. The culprits would threaten their families through letters if their demands were ignored and even visit their houses to pressurise them, said the official.

Further investigation is underway and the police are hopeful they will be able to extract more information from them, the official added.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 29^th, 2013.