HYDERABAD, May 16: The Hyderabad police on Thursday conducted raids in Thatta, Kotri and Nooriabad areas and picked up some suspects, belonging to Palari and Burfat tribes, in the kidnapping case of two oil company officials.

The officials of a multinational oil exploring company, Mubashir Zaidi and Habibur Rehman, are missing since April 11 when they left Hyderabad for Karachi in a car. Their car was later found abandoned in the jurisdiction of the Gulzar Hijri police station, Karachi.

To recover the hostages, a raid was conducted on a hideout of bandits in Bado Jabal mountains near Sehwan, Dadu district, on Tuesday but the hostages as well as their kidnappers were not found there.

However, the police only found belongings of the bandits — clothes and edibles — which indicated that they had just left the place in a hurry.

Leakage of information about the police raid might have facilitated bandits to flee, a reliable police official said.

He told this correspondent: “Someone from the Balochistan police leaked the information to bandits and caused deliberate delay in handing over a suspect to the Citizen Police Liaison Committee, Karachi, to identify the area where the hostages were held”. Wahid Bux and another suspect, who were picked up by the Balochistan police and were handed over to the CPLC, Karachi.