LAHORE: Police resolved the murder case of a young online taxi driver and arrested the murder suspect who revealed that he had killed the young driver dead for refusing to wait to pick his girlfriend.

Identified as Muhammad Tahir, the suspect told the media and police that he had booked the ride to pick his ‘girlfriend’ from the Sanda area. As he reached near her residence and asked taxi driver Muhammad Ali (26) to wait for her, he refused to do so because of risks involved in picking the girl up late in the night, the suspect added.

He further said the pistol used in the crime was of his friend who was accompanying him at the crime scene.

“I used cell phone of my friend, Mohsin, to book the ride,” Tahir said, adding he and his accomplice first went to the DHA Phase V on the cab where they consumed ice (methamphetamine)drug and then asked the driver to take them to Rewaz Garden.

He said he had also planned to rob the driver. As the girlfriend got late and the taxi driver refused to wait further, he tried to snatch money and cell phone from him.

On offering resistance, he opened fire and fled the scene, the suspect said. There were also some reports that the suspect had surrendered himself to the police when they took some of his family members in custody to exert pressure on him.

Sharing details of the murder case, DIG investigations Shariq Jamal Khan told the media that Tahir was a robber too. He said that after killing Ali, the suspect fled the scene leaving the car and the body on the road.

Talking about another case, he said the police also arrested the suspect from Vehari for allegedly raping a two-year-old girl child in Mughalpura.

He said the suspect was a close relative of the victim.

Published in Dawn, January 13th, 2021