Advocate Nisar Durrani did not flinch once when he was part of the lawyers’ movement to restore the judiciary. But the kidnapping of his teenage son shook his resolve.
“Remember me if I die,” read a letter that Zulfiqar Durrani wrote to his family a few days after he was kidnapped on September 30. “This letter terrified us so much that our hopes of his safe recovery began to dash,” said Durrani, who is the president of the Sindh High Court Bar Association Hyderabad.
The young boy, a student of class XI, was kidnapped for ransom. The legal fraternity reacted instantaneously by boycotting the courts for two to three days around the province. The reaction built pressure on the police and, consequently, on the kidnappers.
However, the kidnappers immediately shifted the strain to the family by posting this letter through a private courier from Nawabshah to Durrani’s residence in Hyderabad. The mail also contained the memory card of Zulfiqar’s mobile in which his audio message for the family was recorded. “My son was crying, saying that he was not being given food and water,” Durrani recalled.
The kidnappers demanded tens of millions of rupees for his release and Durrani could offer them only a few million. The haggling between the two sides gave the police time to plan their strategy.
Ultimately, the boy came back home 35 days after his abduction. The police claimed it was due to the indirect pressure exerted on the kidnappers. Durrani also denies paying ransom and expresses satisfaction with the way the police pursued the case. He is determined to bring the suspected kidnappers to justice as the police have revealed to him at least five names who were involved in the crime. Although the suspects have not been charged in the FIR, one of them Muhammad Khan Solangi has been killed in a police encounter.
The travail of Durrani, his son and family is no different from that of the parents and families of the other kidnapped persons who remain in captivity for months. A total of 18 persons were kidnapped this year from five districts in Hyderabad police range, according to the statistics obtained from the DIG office. One of them has still not been recovered while the body of Dr Imdad Soomro, deputy medical superintendent of Sir CJ Cowasjee Mental Hospital in Hyderabad, was found from Jamshoro on September 19, a month after his abduction.
The cases of at least three kidnapped persons were not registered at the police stations because of the families’ aversion to engage the police. They included a relative of DIG Motorways Bashir Memon and two sons of a university professor who returned after paying ransom.
Seven of them were freed after paying ransom and three through involvement of communities and influential persons. The remaining six were recovered through the police. At least eight of the abductees were aged between 10 to 23 years.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 25th, 2014.
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