KARACHI: An antiterrorism court on Monday granted bail to five government employees arrested recently for their alleged involvement in kidnapping a jeweller for ransom.

Police booked Adnan, Hasaan, Haris, Umair and Zeeshan for allegedly kidnapping Hamza and receiving a ransom of Rs4.5 million for his release last month. They are currently confined in prison on judicial remand.

On Monday, the suspects, through their lawyer, filed their bail applications before the judge of the ATC-XVI, who heard the matter in the judicial complex inside the central prison.

Suspects are associated with judiciary, customs and police

Defence counsel Abid Zaman argued that the applicants had been framed in the present case on the basis of false and fabricated allegations since the complainant said the kidnappers were unidentified men.

He submitted that there were glaring contradictions in the statement of the victim and the circumstantial evidence allegedly collected by the arresting agency.

He pleaded the judge to grant his clients bail assuring that they would not abscond away after availing the bail.

On the other hand, the state prosecutor opposed the bail applications and pleaded the judge to dismiss the same since no case for grant of bail to the applicants was made out at the present stage of investigation.

After hearing arguments, the judge granted bail to the applicants subjecting to furnishing a surety of Rs20,000 each.

Last month, Rangers claimed to have busted a gang of alleged kidnappers and handed them over to police.

The police alleged that, Adnan, an employee at a local court, was the mastermind of the gang while two suspects were identified as the employees of the Pakistan Customs. It further said that two suspects were serving as police constables.

Another suspect is employed at the district municipal corporation-Centra.

The police said that the suspects had abducted a young jeweller for Rs20m ransom, but his family paid Rs4.5m to them for his safe recovery.

It said that after the kidnapping the victim the suspects removed the SIM card from his cell phone and used his WhatsApp account to make the ransom calls.

A case was registered under Sections 365-A (kidnapping or abducting for extorting property, valuable security, etc.) and 34 (common intention) of the Pakistan Penal Code read with Section 7 of the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1997 at the SITE Superhighway police station.

Published in Dawn, January 4th, 2022