Four month effort: Security forces recover PIA pilot abducted

Captain Muhammad Saeed Ahmed was freed after remaining captive since the mid of February

KARACHI: A senior pilot of Pakistan International Airline (PIA), abducted nearly four months ago, was finally recovered by law enforcement agencies.

Captain Saeed Ahmed had been abducted in mid-February when he was at a Defence nursery in Karachi.

Speaking to The Express Tribune, Head of Anti-Violent Crime Cell (AVCC), SP Muqaddas Haider said police recovered Ahmed from an intercity bus travelling from Hyderabad to Karachi, near Nooriabad.

“We had been busy in the search operation when we found him in a bus,” he said, adding, “The kidnappers were trying to shift him from Hyderabad to avoid a police raid.”

Read: Back home: Abducted girl recovered during search op

The kidnappers had demanded a ransom of Rs50 million for Ahmed's release.

“We managed to trace their hideout through their last phone call,” SP Haider said, adding that no arrest had been made during the raid, though they were still working but they were still looking for them.

He claimed that multiple gangs of kidnappers operating in rural Sindh were involved in abducting since they had received calls from various cities of the province including Hyderabad, Khairpur, Nawabshah and Jacobabad.

Read: Seven abducted policemen recovered near Rahim Yar Khan

Sources in the AVCC, however, told The Express Tribune that the recovery became possible after investigators arrested two key-players from rural Sindh and pressurised the kidnappers to release Ahmed.

“The kidnappers had been negotiating with us to release their comrades for the pilot," they said.