KARACHI: Police’s Anti-Car Lifting Cell (ACLC) on Thursday claimed to have busted a gang of motorbike lifters who had allegedly taken away up to 400 motorbikes in recent past and sold them in Balochistan.

Acting on a tip-off, the police arrested four suspects on Shahrah-i-Quaideen and seized arms, motorcycles, mobile phones and cash from them.

The held suspects were identified as Mohammad Umair (gang leader), Kamran, Koraib and Hamza.

“They belong to the SH-1 motorcycle racer group whose champion racer is Umair, who is basically a mechanic,” said ACLC SSP Munir Ahmed Shaikh.

Speaking at a press conference at his office, the SSP said that each suspect had his own “altered” motorbike.

“They tended to snatch new motorbikes and sold the same after altering them. They snatched 10 to 12 motorbikes on a daily basis,” said the officer.

Mr Shaikh pointed out that so far they had snatched 300-400 motorbikes, which were later on sold to a man named Saleem in Khuzdar, Balochistan, at Rs10,000 apiece.

They mostly committed crimes in the Nagan Chowrangi, Sakhi Hasan, Five Star Chowrangi and Sohrab Goth areas. They were arrested with the help of footage obtained from bakers in the Azizabad area, where a robbery took place on Nov 3 in which arrested suspect Umair was seen wearing a police cap. This video had gone viral on social media.

‘Youth hired for drug smuggling’

Separately, the ACLC chief claimed having arrested three “drug peddlers” — Mohammad Umar, Abid and Ali Raza — on Northern Bypass near Yousuf Bus Terminal and seized 50 kilos of hashish from their custody.

They were involved in bringing hashish to Karachi from Peshawar, it was stated. During initial investigation of the held suspects, it transpired that the drug smugglers hired services of unemployed youths of Karachi to bring charas (hashish) from Peshawar to Karachi and for each delivery they got Rs10,000 each.

Published in Dawn, November 9th, 2018