ISLAMABAD, Oct 18: Police investigators have found clues that suggest that the murder of a rich family of five, and their servant, in the outskirts of the city last week, was planned by a blood relation with a group over a property of millions.

“It looks the servant helped the group to strangulate Amirullah Khan, his wife and their three children and was himself stabbed to death to hide the identity of the killer or killers,” sources close to the investigation told Dawn.

Such suspicions arose after a man identifying himself as Sikandar phoned police in the evening of October 14 that the woman found lying dead in Loi Bher area early that morning was her aunt Nazia. But when asked to come to identify the body, he switched off his mobile phone and vanished.

Neither did Sikandar mention the body of the servant which was found lying along side the woman, who later turned out to be the wife of Amirullah Khan, a national of Australia living with his family in Bahria Safari Villas, close to Loi Bher area.

Police is hunting for Sikandar who was reportedly last seen at the funeral of the murdered family in their native Pirpiyai village in Nowshera district.

Bodies of Amirullah, daughter Romana and sons Hyderullah and Adamullah, were found dumped several kilometres away in Sihala area.

PTI MNA Nafeesa Inayatullah Khattak, a sister-in-law of the chief minister Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and PPP Senator Farhatullah Babar are closely related to the Amirullah family.

Police investigators suspect some dispute over the property, valued between Rs120 million and Rs150 million, led a blood relation to plan, directly or indirectly, the crime, executed with the help of the servant, who was employed only a week before the murders and has remained unidentified so far.

“We have some leads that the servant was planted in the family’s house by the killer or killers to get inside,” the sources said.

“The servant was hired by the family on the recommendation of a person who had close relation with it.”

But it is yet to be established whether the person did so intentionally or unintentionally.

“Efforts are in progress to trace and arrest the person,” said the sources.

Other circumstantial evidence strengthened the suspicion that he was planted in the family.

Police found no signs of any break in at the house, nor of any resistance to any killers. But the family’s Land Cruiser was standing in the porch, with its door open and key in the ignition.

It could be that the servant drugged the family and let the killer or killers in to strangulate them all, said the sources. Thin metal wire was used to kill them, according to the autopsy report.

Bahria Town guards told the investigators that the servant was seen driving out the family’s Land Cruiser around 4am on October 14 and returning to the Safari Villas about an hour later.

Police investigators suspect that he went out to remove, or help the killers remove the bodies of Amirullah and his children to dump at a desolate place in Sihala area. The tyre marks found at the spot matched with those of the Land Cruiser, according to the sources.

After returning to the crime scene, the killer or killers might have taken the servant in their car to dump the body of Amirullah’s wife Nazia in Loi Bher area and finished him off too to hide their identity.

Police sources say contents of the bodies of the murdered family have been sent to the chemical examiner in Lahore to determine whether the victims were drugged before being killed.