RAWALPINDI: Police have solved the kidnapping and murder of assistant director of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) and recovered his body from a graveyard in Tarnol after ten days and also arrested four suspects, one of them was a close friend of the deceased.

SSP Operations, retired flight lieutenant Hafiz Kamran Asghar told newsmen that police had arrested four suspects involved in the kidnapping for ransom and murder as all of them belonged to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and recovered weapons and vehicle used by the kidnappers.

During investigation, the suspects revealed that the deceased Rehmatullah died immediately after the kidnapping and the body was buried. On the pointation of the accused Sadiq, a laborer, the body was recovered from Tarnol and shifted to the District Headquarters Hospital for postmortem. The relatives of the deceased identified the body, police said.

The SSP Operations said that the deceased left his house to visit his friend, one ofd the suspects, on the morning of second day of Eidul Fitr but did not return.

Body recovered from graveyard in Tarnol

He said that preliminary investigation revealed that Rehmatullah died the same day. However, the real cause of his death was yet to be established because the suspects had been claiming that he died of cardiac arrest and was buried in a graveyard near Tarnol. Later, the kidnappers went to Chiniot and made a phone call to the family of Rehmatullah and demanded Rs10 million ransom.

“Since the kidnappers knew that Rehmatullah had enough money, they detained him and later demanded Rs10 million from his family,” SSP Kamran said.

He said the arrest of the main accused Sadiq came about after the police took the CCTV footage from an ATM booth which led to his arrest. Otherwise, the police teams had been searching for the kidnappers in Chiniot in the wake of a threat call they had made from there to mislead the police.

Initially, he said, Sadiq was detained who revealed that Waheed Gul, Abdullah and Mohammad Bahadur were also accompanying him. Later, they were arrested by the police, he said.

Yes, the DNA test on the body will also be conducted, the accused were friends of the deceased and one of the accused was the owner of the room, the deceased had been using.

Mohammad Shafiq, a resident of Dhoke Syedan Kamalabad, brother-in-law of the victim lodged an FIR with the R.A. Bazaar police two days after his brother-in-law Rehmatullah went missing.

He said in the FIR that Rehmatullah left his house on Friday at 11:30am saying that he was going to visit his friends and he would be back in the evening. But he did not return and neither had he responded to calls made on his mobile phone repeatedly.

He further said that Rehmat’s mobile phone was switched off due to which his family got worried. After failing to find his clue, his family sought police help and lodged an FIR with the R.A Bazaar police.

According to sources, the family of the victim had reportedly received threatening calls as the kidnappers have been demanding Rs10 million ransom for the release of Rehmatullah.

Published in Dawn, April 23rd, 2024