Conspiracy exposed: Kidnapping, ransom and blackmailing

Rating company Medialogic colludes with CIA Model Town police

LAHORE:

A malicious conspiracy hatched by television rating company Medialogic Pakistan in collusion with some officials of the Crime Investigation Agency (CIA) Lahore to blackmail Express News has been exposed.

Medialogic Pakistan demanded Rs450 million from the Express News management and claimed that it had ‘evidences’ against the media group. When refused, the company began making up these ‘evidences’.

The owner of the company, Salman Danish, chose his company’s employee Shaista and asked her to testify that Express News had pressurised households to tune into the channel — an attempt that resulted in an increase in its overall ratings.

When Shaista refused to become a part of the malicious campaign, Danish, in collusion with CIA Lahore Inspector Bashir Niazi, lodged a fake FIR against her. Shaista and her family were also threatened of dire consequences, including arrest — evidences of which in the form of call recordings are available with Express News.

When all their efforts to pressurise her failed, Medialogic’s officers along with the CIA Model Town Police station kidnapped her brothers from Rawalpindi, and then forced her to come to Lahore and sign documents including blank stamp papers in return for the release of her brothers.

Disregarding all standard procedures — such as obtaining a search or arrest warrant, and informing the local police station — the CIA raided Shaista’s house in Rawalpindi and rather than apprehending her as she had obtained a pre-arrest bail, took into custody two of her brothers, Majid and Wajid.

Shaista said the police first dragged her brothers and father out onto the road. Later the police party released her father but handcuffed her brothers and took them away in a police van. Her father spent rest of the night searching for his sons in all the police stations of the city.

Her brothers were later brought to Lahore and locked up at CIA Lahore’s Model Town police station.

Instead of being received at a police station, Shaista was called in for a meeting at Medialogic’s office, where she was forced to sign and put thumbprints on a number of blank papers, as well as stamp papers with false narratives. Her brothers were freed once all signatures were done. All this was done in the presence of Inspector Bashir Niazi.

“Medialogic GM Khalid Dost asked me to offer an apology to the owner. I refused at first but they kept me detained in the room for five hours and later I had to offer him an apology and sign on plain and stamp papers,” she said.

All documents, call recordings and versions of witnesses and victims are available with Express News.

Shaista’s family has appealed to the authorities concerned and army chief General Raheel Sharif to provide her justice. Shaista’s mother said her sons and other members of family do not sleep at their home out of fear.

 

Published in The Express Tribune, September 8^th, 2015.