Saturday, August 27, 2011

Lahore,Abductions on the rise in City



Model Town Division of City Police badly failed to recover Amir Aftab Malik, son-in-law of Gen (r) Tariq Majeed and American citizen Dr Warren Weinstein, who were kidnapped on gunpoint from the different vicinities of the same police division.
According to the facts, Amir was kidnapped on August 25, 2010 whereas Dr Warren was abducted on August 13, 2011. The City Police especially SP Omer Virk-led CIA and SPs Malik Awais and Shoaib Khuram-led Operations and Investigation Wings of Model Town Division are clueless about the whereabouts of the kidnappers or abductees till filing of this report.
“A year has passed but no one knows where is Amir, a jeweller and Garden Town Traders Union President who was kidnapped when he was entering his home in Faisal Town,” said family sources.
According to them, they learnt several times that Taliban-led Al-Qaeda and Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan have kidnapped Amir and even someone from law enforcement agencies went on to say that Amir had been sent to Afghanistan.
The family sources further said that in different span of times, they further learnt that the Taliban were demanding immediate release of their 50 comrades including Aqeel alias Dr Usman and Zubair alias Naik Muhammad and were demanding Rs 300 million as ransom.
When contacted, couple of police investigators, requesting anonymity said the teams are yet probing into the matter and investigating various aspects of the case, including the possibility of kidnapping for ransom and monetary dispute. “Yes, terrorism act cannot be ruled out but we are still clueless,” they said, adding the kidnappers had not contacted the family so far.
On the other side, several persons broke into a house in Model Town on August 13, overcame security guards and kidnapped US citizen identified as an international development expert Dr Warren Weinstein.
“Weinstein had been working for JE Austin & Associates, an Arlington, Virginia-based consulting firm, on a development project in tribal areas of the country where troops are battling RAW, Mossad and CIA-fed extremists for the last several years,” a senior security source said. Reported crime statistics show that about four to five people, majority of them girls, are kidnapped every day in one way or the other in the provincial capital. Ironically, such incidents are not reported most of time in official diary of the City Police due to certain reasons. Law enforcement experts, however, have attributed this ever deteriorating situation across the province to bad governance at provincial as well as at federal level. They say ‘crime-encouraging’ policies are made at federal level whereas the provinces are bearing the consequences. They further said dozens of such incidents in the provincial capital have exposed the real performance of the government, law enforcement agencies and other security institutions.
Meanwhile, adopting old tradition, the City Police were put on high alert following the abduction of Shahbaz Taseer on Friday.
Patrolling has been intensified throughout the city besides cordoning off all intercity routes in the wake of Shahbaz Taseer kidnapping, said Capital City Police Officer Ahmad Raza Tahir. He said Additional SPs and SDPOs had been directed to take effective precautionary measures, especially in crowded public places, to prevent incidents of terrorism and subversion.

No comments: