SAHIWAL: A Pakistan-origin Chinese national and engineer working at Karachi-based coal-fired power plant has gone missing from Pakpattan city.

Sources say engineer Muhammad Yousaf’s all mobile numbers are silent for the last 35 hours.

Pakpattan District Police Officer Kamran Yousaf confirmed to Dawn that the missing Chinese engineer’s wife, Sumera Yousaf, filed an application at 6pm on Saturday with the city police station that her husband had gone missing since Friday morning.

He was on a visit to Pakpattan to see his in-laws.

The sources said Muhammad Yousaf had been working in China for the last many years and had Chinese nationality.

He is among the Chinese workers and engineers who shifted to Pakistan to build a coal-fired power plant at Bin Qasim Port, Karachi.

He married Sumera Bibi, a resident of Shahidi Mohalla, Pakpattan, in February 2016.

City police station SHO Saifullah said Yousaf was in the city since May 5.

“On early Friday he went missing mysteriously,” Sumera Yousaf claimed in her application.

A source said the Chinese engineer had his own security arrangements, adding that Yousaf could neither be contacted on his mobile phone nor logged in to his social media account for the last 36 hours.

The DPO told Dawn by phone the initial investigations revealed that Yousaf was attached with a religious organisation for the last many years. He frequently visited Pakistan along with his parents, he added.

SHO Saifullah said Yousaf frequently visited his in-laws without informing local police and other security agencies.

DPO said police were informed of Yousaf’s absence on Sunday. “Police have started investigation on all possible lines, including his kidnapping or voluntarily moving to some other place”, the DPO added.

Published in Dawn, May 8th, 2016