KARACHI: A banking court has issued non-bailable warrants for arrest of four absconding suspects allegedly involved in illegally withdrawing money from a bank account through mobile phone money transfers.

The absconding suspects — Mohammad Younus, Mohammad Aslam, Mohammad Nadeem and Bushra Zahoor — along with their two accomplices have been booked by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) for allegedly threatening and fraudulently withdrawing Rs2 million from a citizen’s bank account.

Judge Tariq Mehmood Khoso directed the investigating officer to arrest the absconding suspects and produce them before the court on the next date.Earlier, the investigating officer submitted a supplementary investigation report, submitting that by impersonating officials of the security agencies, the suspects had contacted several citizens on telephone, threatened them and illegally obtained details of their bank accounts.

Later, the suspects withdrew the money from the citizens’ bank accounts through around 25 mobile phone money transferring accounts, it stated and maintained that the FIA had got those mobile phone money transfer accounts blocked.

The report also mentioned that one suspect, Imran, had been arrested and was currently in jail while Iqbal had obtained bail. The IO showed four suspects, Younus, Aslam, Nadeem and Bushra Zahoor, as absconders in the report and mentioned that raids were being conducted for their arrest.

Mentioning the role of the suspects, the investigation report mentioned that Younus and Iqbal had allegedly illegally got Rs1m and Rs0.5m, respectively. It also mentioned that the suspects impersonating officials of a security agency also contacted a citizen, Binat Khan, on Sept 29 on telephone and asked him to share details of his bank account.

The suspects threatened to bulldoze his house in his native town in Waziristan if he failed to share his bank account details and upon getting the same, they illegally got Rs2m withdrawn from his account the next day, the report mentioned.

The report also mentioned that absconding suspects Zahoor and Nadeem hailed from Jhang and Bahawalpur, respectively.

Published in Dawn, November 18th, 2018