KARACHI, May 31: Four people — three bankers and an industrialist — were kidnapped in different parts of the city on Tuesday, officials said.

The first incident was reported in the Bin Qasim area where three banker friends — two of them associated with the State Bank of Pakistan — went missing after leaving a club where they had come to have dinner on Monday night.

“The incident came to our notice when the area police spotted an abandoned car near the club,” said DSP Abdul Fateh Saangri, the area's supervisory police officer (SPO). “Finding it suspicious, they checked the record and came to know that the car belongs to a senior SBP official.

2His family was contacted and then facts started unfolding.”

The family told the police that he along with two other banker friends had gone to have dinner at the club. However, neither he nor his friends returned home.

“The cellphones of all the three persons were found switched off and no contact has been made from any side. We registered a case (FIR 112/2011) under Sections 365 (kidnapping or abducting with intent secretly and wrongfully to confine person) and 34 (common intention) of the Pakistan Penal Code against unidentified persons,” added the Bin Qasim SPO.

In anther incident, a young industrialist was picked up by armed men near Gulshan-i-Ghazi within the remit of the Mochko police station when he was driving to his workplace.

“According to witnesses, some armed men intercepted the industrialist's vehicle, dragged him out and put him into their vehicle,” said an official at the Mochko police station. “The kidnappers, however, abandoned the victim's car in the area.”

The fresh kidnapping incidents that police investigators believed were executed for ransom forced the authorities to take extra measures and assign a senior official to carry out the investigations.

“We had almost eliminated the gangs operating in the area,” claimed Capital City Police Officer Saud Mirza. “The fresh incidents, however, reflect that they (the gangs) have been reactivated. The Investigation DIG has been assigned to conduct a probe into the incidents and expedite the process of safe recovery of the victims.”