Afghan deputy governor goes missing in Peshawar

PESHAWAR: A senior Afghan government official and deputy governor of the eastern Kunar province, Qazi Mohammad Nabi Ahmadi, went missing after reaching the provincial capital the previous day, sources said on Saturday.

The sources said that the Afghan official along with his brother Habibullah arrived in the city via Torkham in a cab and after visiting the Firdous locality he went to Dabgari Gardens in an auto-rickshaw to see a doctor. He reportedly went missing in Dabgari Gardens, a crowded locality with scores of doctors’ clinics, private hospitals and laboratories visited by thousands of patients and their attendants every day, particularly in the evenings.

“Habibullah approached the Civil Quarters police post at midnight and said he along with his brother had come to Dabgari to see a doctor as he was having kidney ailment,” a source told The News. The source said the complainant did not mention that his brother was a deputy governor of Afghanistan.

The complainant told the police that when they crossed the overhead bridge near Shahi Mehman Khana on foot and reached Dabgari, some people in a vehicle with tinted glasses seized his brother and drove away. “The police were not informed about the visit of any senior Afghan official to the provincial capital. We have launched an inquiry on the complaint by his brother,” a senior official requesting anonymity told this scribe. He also pointed out that the
cellular phone of Qazi Mohammad Nabi was switched off since Thursday. A police official said that they  have launched an investigation into the case after receiving the complaint of the brother,” he added.

News Desk adds: Verifying the news after contact with the Afghanistan Embassy, the spokesperson for Foreign Office presented the Afghanistan Embassy’s narrative saying that Kunar’s Deputy Governor Muhammad Nabi had come to Peshawar for medical treatment but has since then gone missing, local media reported.

“The Afghanistan Embassy also requested the Foreign Office to gather and share information regarding the missing governor,” the spokesperson said, adding  the relevant deparments have been informed about the incident and have been instructed to recover the missing governor.

Afghanistan's Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Consul General Moeen Akhtar said Muhammad Nabi had come to Peshawar on Thursday and scheduled an appointment with a doctor in Dabggari the next day. “There, he was abducted by unidentified gunmen and we still haven’t heard anything about him,” he added.