ISLAMABAD: Daredevil criminals robbed, beat up and tricked citizens and police personnel in the city on Friday, humiliating the security establishment of the federal capital.

Indeed, unarmed citizens displayed more courage when they chased two robbers who had snatched the motorcycle of a citizen and caught up with them in a dead-end alley in sector I-10/1.

Unfortunately, one of the cornered robbers pulled out a pistol and fired at the captors. The shots hit a passerby, Malik Maqsood, in the leg. As the chaser got busy taking care of the downed man, the robbers escaped on the stolen motorcycle.

Within an hour of this incident, two armed constables on patrol on a motorcycle spotted five suspicious-looking persons in far away Lohi Bher area and accosted them.

Police sources said while the five were being questioned, one of them snatched the submachine gun of the constable who was supposedly standing guard. The confrontation ended in the five beating the two policemen black and blue and taking away their arms and official motorcycle.

Friday had dawned with infamy for the Islamabad police. An elaborate raid orgnaised by them overnight to bust a narcotics den got them nothing – neither the “huge quantity of drugs” nor the drug dealers they had gone to village Athal for.

A police officer told Dawn that the police had acted on a tip that dealers of Islamabad and Rawalpindi were there to purchase fresh supplies of narcotics transported there. The police contingent sent on the secret mission cordoned off the area and moved cautiously towards the target, but were stunned by the hail of fire that greeted them.

“They (the criminals) were lying in wait and fired their sophisticated weapons indiscriminately. Our men retaliated but the drug traffickers managed to escape with the narcotics, breaking the police cordon,” the officer said, musing that the drug dealers had prior information of the raid.

Published in Dawn, November 8th, 2014