LAHORE: The five-member robbers’ gang, which robbed several houses, including the one owned by a retired deputy commissioner (DC) in Defence Housing Authority (DHA), reportedly belongs to the Kalachi area of district Kohat, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and fled to their native place.

A team of the Lahore Organised Crime Unit (OCU), formerly CIA, is reportedly facing a hard time to reach the ‘inaccessible area’ of the KP.

The investigations into the robbery in Phase 4 of the DHA on Oct 23 committed by the robbers who used mobile phone jammers revealed that the gang had robbed 20 houses in the locality during the last two years.

Some victims have appealed to Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz to take notice of unprofessional behaviour and incompetence of police, claiming that the investigations had been abandoned.

They claimed that the officers, including DIG Investigation Zeeshan Asghar, didn’t bother to show interest in their cases.

Talking to Dawn, they suggested to the CM to launch a ‘third-party audit’ of the investigation police to assess its performance.

Investigators found that the gang, belonging to KP, was active in the area since 2022

An official, privy to the development, said that in the recent house robbery, the same gang, which was active in the area, broke into the house of Mubhashar Ahmad and took away cash, gold ornaments and other valuables worth over Rs15m.

The investigation revealed that this particular gang had looted more than 20 houses in the DHA using almost the same technique of mobile phone jammers.

In May, he said, the criminals had looted the house of a retired DC in the Defence B police area. They had deprived his family of cash, gold ornaments and other valuables worth over Rs60m. It was the biggest house robbery in Lahore during recent years.

During the last 20 days, he said, four houses were robbed by the same gang of robbers in the Defence A and Defence B police areas.

The official revealed that the ex-DC himself took up the responsibility of ‘tracing’ the criminals when he found out that police had abandoned the probe. He called on Mubashar and obtained information from him for identification of the robbers.

“We both exchanged information and concluded that it was the same five-member gang, which deprived the both families of millions of rupees,” Mubashar told Dawn.

He said police visited his house the same day when he called 15 to report the robbery.

“After inspecting the crime scene, no one from the police contacted me,” he added.

Talking to Dawn by phone, the ex-DC also spoke about the non-professional behaviour of the investigators.

“I got just one call from the investigating officer who told me that he was probing the case after the transfer of his colleague to another police station. After that, no one visited or contacted me,” the ex-officer complained.

DIG Investigation Zeeshan Asghar was not available for comments.

OCU DIG Imran Kishwar said his team working on the recent house robbery case has taken an important lead.

“The OCU team was present in the Alachi area of Kohat, KP, the stronghold of the terrorists, where the police were in contact with the local authorities to help arrest the gangsters.”

Mr Kishwar said the robbers were wanted in the heinous crime cases in DHA.

Published in Dawn, October 28th, 2024