KARACHI, May 5: A retired bank officer who had been kidnapped for ransom on Friday was found murdered on Monday under a bridge in Nazimabad.

His family identified the body.

The police said bank officer Abbas Barkat Ali, aged 44, resident of Ferozabad, had retired a year back through the golden handshake scheme. Since then, he had been upset and mentally disturbed. Recently, he made a new friend, Mushtaq, who frequently visited his home. On Friday, Mushtaq asked the family to allow him to take Ali to Nazimabad for spiritual treatment.

They left in Ali’s car on Friday morning and in the afternoon Mushtaq called up Ali’s family to tell them that Ali was not well and this could delay them. The family waited for Ali’s return. When he did not return home on Saturday, the family lodged a report with the police.

The police found Ali’s car abandoned in Taimuria police limits in North Nazimabad on Saturday. The family received a ransom call from an unknown caller who demanded Rs3 million for the release of Ali.

The police registered a case of kidnapping for ransom and began investigations with the help of the Citizen-Police Liaison Committee.

A partially-decomposed body, stuffed into a gunny bag, was found on a garbage dump under the Nazimabad railway bridge on Saturday. The face of the dead man was wrapped in bandage, the police said. The Edhi Foundation buried the dead man as the body was so badly decomposed that it could not be kept in morgue.

On Monday, the police exhumed the body and the family identified the dead man.

Quoting the family, the police said the family did not know much about Mushtaq. Investigations revealed that the ransom call was received from Shikarpur and a police team had been sent there, the police said.

On April 14, two officials of a foreign petroleum company were kidnapped for ransom on Super Highway in Gulzar-i-Hijri police limits while they were coming to Karachi from Hyderabad. The police and the CPLC have been investigating the case, but so far they have not found any clue to the kidnappers.

Sources in the police said a manager at the petroleum company’s Hyderabad office, Mubashir Husain Zaidi, and an engineer, Habibur Rahman, went missing along with the car in which they were travelling.

The police found the car abandoned in Malik Colony in Gulzar-i-Hijri police limits on Super Highway on the next day of their kidnapping.