ATC rejects bail plea of CTD man

An anti-terrorism court on Tuesday rejected the bail application of a Counter Terrorism Department official being tried on charges of involvement in short-term kidnappings of citizens for ransom.

The ATC-XX judge dismissed the pre-arrest bail plea moved by Khalid Jawed, a serving constable with the CTD of the Sindh police, ordered his arrest and sent him to the jail on judicial remand, said assistant prosecutor general Iqbal Meo.

A woman, Rabia Naveed, had lodged a complaint with the police that at around 2am on October 27, 2019, five plainclothesmen, one of them brandishing a rifle, arrived in a police car at her doorstep in Orangi Town and forcibly took away her husband Naveed Ansari.

Rabia said that her husband returned home the next day at around noon and told that the men had let him go only to bring Rs300,000 back to them by 3pm as the ransom amount for his release. She added that the men had also warned him against reporting the incident to police, saying that if he did so they might lose their jobs but he would lose his life.

She said she received a call from a person who wished not to identify himself and asked her to come and see him at a place because he claimed to have the solution to her problem. The person was her neighbour, Muhammad Ashraf, who is a constable with the Rapid Response Force, and he told her to give her the money so that no one would trouble her or her husband again.

After the meeting, she went to the police, who asked her to call the person to meet and collect the money. She had agreed to pay Rs25,000 in marked thousand-rupee notes, and as the man was collecting the money, the police arrested him. During interrogation he disclosed the involvement of seven other people, including an assistant sub-inspector of the police.

The woman said the same policemen had raided her home a month ago and had looted Rs250,000, jewellery and two cameras. The case was registered under sections 384 (Punishment for extortion), 385 (Putting person in fear of injury in order to commit extortion) and 386 (Extortion by putting a person in fear of death or grievous hurt) of the Pakistan Penal Code read with Section 7 of the Anti-Terrorism Act at the Pakistan Bazaar police station.