September 20, 2008	Saturday	Ramazan 19, 1429

KARACHI, Sept 19: The strangled body of a teenager was found in his car parked in a Clifton apartment on Friday afternoon in the jurisdiction of the Boat Basin police.

According to police, eighteen-year-old Ali Nawaz, a resident of DHA Phase VIII, left for the place of one of his friends in Gulshan-i-Iqbal for Iftar on Thursday evening.

The police quoted the victim’s friends as saying that after Iftar, at around 10.30pm, they decided to visit Khadda Market in their respective cars and stopped at a fuel station located on Sharea Faisal, they said.

The victim’s friends told the police that at the fuel station Ali, who was a student at a business school, received a call on his cellphone. He told the caller that he was coming. Ali then told his friends to proceed to Khadda Market, adding that he would join them later. At around 11.30pm, some unknown person called Ali Nawaz’s father from the victim’s cellphone and demanded a ransom for his son’s release. Upon realising that his son had been kidnapped, Iftikhar Ali, a builder by profession, informed the Citizens-Police Liaison Committee (CPLC) and the Anti-Violent Crime Cell about the incident, SP Clifton Azad Khan told Dawn.

Later that night, the victim’s father also received several text messages inquiring as to whether the ransom money had been arranged or not.

However, on Friday afternoon a passerby noticed a body lying on the backseat of a car (APT-988) in the parking-lot of Marine Pride Apartments near the Bilawal House.

After the confirmation of the identity of the deceased, the police informed the victim’s father about the unfortunate incident. Later, the body was shifted to the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre for a postmortem examination.

Sources at the hospital said that the body was at least 16- to 18-hours-old, which suggested that the teenager had been killed shortly after being kidnapped.

SP Khan said that the incident did not appear to be a routine kidnap for ransom case.

An FIR has been registered at the Boat Basin police station under Sections 302 and 365-A of the Pakistan Penal Code against unknown persons.

Robbed

Two armed men deprived a woman of her gold ornaments on Abul Hasan Ispahani Road.

The victim, Mrs Saleem, was riding in a rickshaw when two young men riding a motorcycle intercepted the rickshaw near Paradise Homes and started snatching her purse and jewellery.

The incident occurred at around 6pm. Meanwhile, some area people rushed to the crime scene upon which the suspects took the woman hostage at gunpoint and threatened to kill her if the crowd came near them.

The suspects managed to flee with their loot.

An FIR has been registered at the Sachal police station.

Accident

Amir Ali, 30, was knocked down by a fast-moving truck on the National Highway. He died on the spot.