KARACHI: Police on Thursday claimed to have arrested an alleged mastermind of short-term kidnapping in Defence Housing Authority. The suspect and his accomplices had kidnapped a boy while he was on his way to school with his father two months ago.

Darakhshan police arrested the suspect, Mumtaz Arif, in the Badar Commercial area of Defence, said Karachi South DIG Javed Alam Odho.

Speaking at a press conference at his office, the DIG said that the five-year-old boy was kidnapped in Defence on April 24. The police had killed two suspected kidnappers and arrested another suspect and recovered the child safely.

Mr Odho said Mumtaz, a driver, was the mastermind of the schoolboy’s kidnapping. He would be handed over to the Anti-Violent Crime Cell for further legal action.

The DIG said that a few years back, kidnapping for ransom and extortion were a challenge for the police but the same had been curbed now.

Answering a question, the officer admitted that there was no ‘normal’ polling station in the South zone as out of a total of 661 polling stations, 349 had been declared ‘extremely sensitive’ while the rest had been termed ‘sensitive’.

The DIG claimed that so far no major untoward incident had occurred. However, he apprehended that clashes might occur during election campaigns.

Published in Dawn, July 20th, 2018