HARIPUR: People here overpowered and handed over an alleged thief who was fleeing after setting fire to a shopping mall here on Friday evening.

The basement portion of the mall was completely burnt along with grocery, cloth, garments and household items worth millions of rupees, the owners claimed.

According to Mohammad Amir, owner of Mega Mart shopping mall located at Eastern Circular Road, he closed the mall before Iftar on Friday after putting the daily sale cash in the locker.

He claimed that one of his employees Faheem somehow hid behind the shelves of the basement portion. The suspect, according to the complainant, broke the locker and collected Rs300,000 cash.

The alleged thief set fire to the CCTV cameras to remove the evidence before fleeing using the backdoor.

In the meanwhile, fire erupted and the area people informed the police and Rescue 1122. The alleged thief was, however, caught by area people when he was attempting to flee.

HELP SOUGHT: A woman whose husband was killed over a property dispute about one and a half months ago criticised the local police for using delaying tactics in arrest of the nominated accused.

Speaking to mediapersons here on Saturday, Maryam Bibi said that on March 22 Haq Nawaz, his two sons and a nephew attacked her husband Abid Sultan, who was a patwari, his brother Mehmood Sultan and Ehsan Elahi.

She said Abid and Ehsan died on the spot while Sultan was injured. She has demanded early arrest of the alleged killers.

Published in Dawn, May 10th, 2020