Slain family case: Police chief says alleged murderer confessed to crime

Accomplices also arrested from Peshawar.

ISLAMABAD:

The prime suspect in the murder of six people has been arrested, according to the Inspector General of the Islamabad Police (IGP) Sikandar Hayat.

On October 14, the police had found six bodies — four in Gora Shahan near Sihala and two in Loi Bher— five of which belonged to members of a single family.

The police had identified the deceased as Amirullah Khan, a director at a leading cellular services provider, his wife Nadia Amir, their sons Adam and Haider, daughter Romana and the family’s servant Asghar.



The IGP revealed that Nadia’s nephew, Sikandar Zia, has confessed to committing the murders with the help of six people he had hired from Peshawar.

Zia, arrested a couple of days ago, stated in his confessional statement that he killed the family in order to take control of their property, which was registered under his aunt’s name.

An Australian national, Khan and his wife owned around a dozen houses in Rawalpindi in addition to the murder site, a house in Bahria Town, where they lived.

The well-connected family belonged to Pir Piai village near Nowshera.

Khan was the nephew of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Member National Assembly, Nafeesa Khattak while his wife was the niece of late General Naseerullah Babar.

The chief cop said the accused hired a Peshawar-based gang leader, Afsar Khan, who has also been arrested from Peshawar along with two accomplices, and brought four assassins to Rawalpindi, where they temporarily stayed in a room at petrol pump near Bahria Town before the incident.

The family’s newly-hired servant Asghar was also promised Rs500,000 for staying away from the house that night.

According to the police, the suspect helped the assassins enter the house at around 8pm on October 13, and within two hours, they strangulated each member of the family with a thin wire, following which, he used the family’s Toyota Fortuner to transport the bodies to a ditch in Sihala, where he dumped them.

On the second trip to take the body of his aunt, Zia found that the servant was back in the house. Afraid that he might call for help, the men stabbed Asghar to death.

The two bodies were then dumped near Loi Bher, according to officials.

The suspect then used the same car to take the assassins back to Peshawar, but an anti-theft GPS device installed in the car shut it down near Chach interchange and rendered the car unusable, so the men were sent off on public transport while Zia headed back to Islamabad, Hayat said.

Perhaps out of guilt, the accused himself informed the Bahria Town security guards and later police about the body of his aunt On October 14 and also attended the family’s funeral in their native village, after which he returned to the capital again, the IGP added.

The top cop said the initial investigations hinted at him as a prime suspect because CCTV footage on Rawat Toll Plaza and the Bahria Town gate showed him driving the car back and forth in the early hours of October 14.

Hayat said the suspect had an MBA from a Dubai-based university and had returned to Peshawar in 2010, where he accumulated a sizable fortune as a contractor offering parking services for NATO containers moving across the Pak-Afghan border. Later, he lost his wealth to a robbery and business losses, the police claimed.

“I was like a son to Khan,” reads the confession, with the accused goes on to write, “Khan had also helped me financially in the past,” the police chief said referring to the official statement.

The two grew apart when Zia decided to get engaged with a divorcee from their village in February. “His parents were against the engagement, but Khan was especially opposed to the match and tried to stop the wedding every chance he got,” Hayat said.

Calling it a major grievance that might have fuelled Zia’s criminal intent, the top official added that he also wanted to get a hold of the family’s property as his in-laws wanted him to have his own house in Islamabad before the marriage.

The police believe that due to Zia’s close relationship with his aunt and because of the deteriorated relationship Khan had with his brother due to property disputes, the accused thought he would be able to claim the property if the family was taken out of the picture.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 22^nd, 2013.