Abducted UN employees recovered from Steel Town

The two men who work in Hyderabad went missing on Thursday.

KARACHI: The two employees of the United Nations International Children's Fund (Unicef) were recovered from Steel Town on Monday during a joint raid conducted by the Citizens-Police Liaison Committee (CPLC) and the Anti-Violent Crime Cell (AVCC).

The two men went missing from the city's outskirts under mysterious circumstances. Farrukh and Sami had come to Karachi from Hyderabad to visit a family resort on Thursday and were reported missing the same day. In the hours that followed, the police officials refused to register the FIR over a jurisdiction dispute between the Gulshan-e-Maymar police in district West and the Sohrab Goth police in district East. The case eventually went to the CPLC.

The raid was conducted at the kidnappers hideout located on the outskirts of the city. The authorities managed to recover the kidnapped employees but failed to arrest the abductors as they managed to escape.

"There were two kidnappers present when we went in but both of them managed to flee," said CPLC's deputy chief Najeeb Danawala while talking to The Express Tribune. "Our priority at the time was to bring the men back home safely."

An official from the AVCC believed it was a kidnapping for ransom case and militant groups might have been involved. Repeating what Farrukh and Sami had told him, the official said that the kidnappers had given the men a beating and asked how much their families could pay as ransom. Afterward, he added, the abductors kept the men in a small room and would only open the door at mealtimes.

Since it was a kidnapping case, the official claimed, the kidnappers would have made a ransom call in the next two to three days.

"In such cases, the kidnappers usually demand a ransom after a week has passed," said the CPLC deputy chief. "Many people are being kidnapped from the city's outskirts but the police are wasting time in registering the cases and fighting over jurisdiction."

While talking about how the men were picked up, the deputy chief said that they were on their way to pick up one of the employee's spouse from the intercity bus in Sohrab Goth when the kidnappers intercepted them at Gulshan-e-Maymar Industrial Area. The deputy chief also claimed to have seized the kidnappers' white Toyota Corolla car.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 22^nd, 2014.