Bank robber remanded following confession

He is alleged to have committed the first bank robbery of 2015

KARACHI: A suspect who is alleged to have committed the first bank robbery of 2015 has been remanded to police custody following his confession before an anti-terrorism court (ATC).

On Friday, the alleged robber Abdul Salam was presented before the ATC-II by the police.

Police officials told the media that Salam was arrested on June 16 from outside the Banuri Town mosque, as he was trying to escape after planting a bomb in a motorcycle parked there. According to the police, he is a resident of Kala Dhaka, a small mountainous district in the Hazara division, and has been trained in Afghanistan.

When the case came up before the court, the judge asked the suspect if he had looted the bank to which he replied in the affirmative. Video footage of the robbery had also gone viral showing the suspect terrorising the bank staffers in an amateur and humorous way.

In the video, the suspect was seen entering the bank with a pistol in one hand and a hand grenade in the other. The judge asked him if the allegations against him of holding the pistol and explosives during the robbery were true. He said that while the gun was fake, the hand grenade in his hand was live.

In the video, he was seen coming back to the bank, after heading out, to collect the pistol he had forgotten - which he now claims was just a toy. "Ahmed gave the bomb to me," said the wide-eyed suspect, who was exhibiting childish behaviour in the court, in a way as if he was narrating a story.

Approving the prosecution plea, the court sent the suspect to police custody on a 14-day physical remand till July 3.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 19^th, 2015.