KARACHI: Two armed men said to be involved in nearly a dozen of bank heists were shot dead in an ‘encounter’ in the Korangi Industrial Area in the early hours of Thursday, according to police.

The deceased identified as Dilawar alias Murad alias Tiger, 26, and Arslan Iqbal, 25, were involved in 11 bank robberies, said SSP Mohammed Farooq Awan of the Special Investigation Unit (SIU) of police.

Speaking at a press conference at his office, the SSP said the police received a tip-off that a gang of robbers were likely to commit another bank heist in the Korangi Industrial Area. Subsequently, SSP Awan said, the police conducted a random spot check on vehicles in the ‘Mill Area’ of Korangi. When they spotted three suspects riding two motorcycles, they indicated them to stop. However, they opened fire on the police and in ‘retaliatory firing’, two suspects got killed while their third accomplice managed to escape, said the officer.

“Tiger was a ring leader of the gang involved in at least 11 bank robberies in the metropolis recently,” said SSP Awan. They could be identified through CCTV footage obtained from one of the looted banks.

On Jan 8, they along with their accomplices took away Rs1.2 million from a branch of the Allied Bank in Awami Colony and snatched weapons from the guards deputed there. On Jan 20, the JS Bank was looted in Gulistan-i-Jauhar as the same set of suspects took away Rs400,000, while eight days later another branch of the same bank was looted in which the robbers took away Rs4.1 million, snatched arms from the guards and mobile phones from the staff.

SSP Awan said the snatched mobile phones were seized from their custody. Besides the three bank heists last month, this gang had also been involved in eight other bank robberies in the city in the recent past, he added.

The officer said the police identified the fleeing suspect as Farooq alias Chuha, while Imtiaz, Mazhar Shah and Rashid were also part of the same gang.

Some of the suspects had been arrested by the SIU police in bank robbery cases in 2013 and 2014, while one or two of them were released on bail.

The police also claimed to have seized two pistols and one motorbike from their custody, which was stolen from within the jurisdiction of the Site police.

The bodies were shifted to the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre for a post-mortem examination.

Published in Dawn, February 12th, 2016