After 72 hours, Islamabad Police have made no significant breakthrough in the case concerning the attempted abduction of journalist Taha Siddiqui despite an eyewitness coming forward to corroborate Siddiqui's ordeal.
"I was on my way to university and saw him [Siddiqui] running through heavy traffic and slipping and falling and struggling to get into a cab with my own two eyes," a Twitter user wrote on the micro-blogging website.
But police have no leads, due in large part to the close-circuit television (CCTV) cameras on the highway near Koral Chowk — where Siddiqui made his escape — being out of order for the past three months.
Siddiqui, the Pakistan bureau chief of World Is One News, had posted a message via fellow journalist Cyril Almeida's Twitter account on Wednesday, recounting how he was subjected to an abduction attempt by "10-12 armed men."
"I was on my way to [the] airport today at 8:20 am when 10-12 armed men stopped my cab [and] forcibly tried to abduct me," Siddiqui had said.
He had further said he was piled into a car by the armed men but managed to escape by jumping out of the moving vehicle.
The police had registered a First Information Report against unidentified persons, and a police officer told Dawn that the assistance of the Safe City CCTV cameras had been sought.
