Bodies of two doctors missing for 5 days found with gunshot wounds in Fatehjang
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The bodies of two doctors who had gone missing last week have been found from a dam in Fatehjang tehsil of Punjab's Attock district, police said on Monday.
The bodies of Dr Iftikhar Ahmed and Dr Aziz Ahmed bore gunshot wounds and signs of torture, according to police, who suspect the involvement of their employees in the murders.
Three men have been arrested in connection with the double murder.
As per the First Information Report (FIR) registered when the two doctors went missing on March 13, Dr Iftikhar, who lived in the United States, owned some land in Fatehjang and had delegated Dr Aziz to look after the property.
While on a visit to Pakistan, Dr Iftikhar and Dr Aziz had on March 13 drove from Islamabad to Fatehjang to oversee work being done on the said property, which is located in the Ali Jahangir area.
The duo had subsequently gone missing on the same evening during their commute back to Islamabad. An FIR was registered at Fatehjang police station on abduction charges.
On Monday, their bodies were recovered from a small dam in Dhok Suba and were subsequently shifted to hospital for a postmortem examination.
Although the two doctors belonged to a religious minority community, police have dismissed reports that their murders were a hate crime.
Speaking to DawnNewsTV, Fatehjang Station House Officer Abid Munir said Dr Iftikhar owned 46 kanals of farmland in Fatehjang, which he wanted to sell.
He said it had transpired during the initial police investigation that after coming to know of the deceased's plan to sell the land, three of his employees hatched a plan to murder the doctors.
According to the SHO, the three employees, who worked at the property, first murdered Dr Aziz and then forced Dr Iftikhar on gunpoint to sign an affidavit to transfer the ownership of the land in their names. They subsequently shot Dr Iftikhar in the head, the police officer said.
The suspects then dumped the two bodies in a small dam near the farmhouse and covered them with sand.
All three of the suspects have been arrested from Peshawar and Mansehra, SHO Munir said, adding that their four-day remand was obtained from a local court on Monday.
He said police have also recovered the stamp paper that the suspects had Dr Iftikhar sign, while efforts are underway to recover the weapon used by them to murder the two doctors.
