Recently, the provincial metropolis was witness to a strange kind of heist, in which a German and a Swiss national were robbed of bitcoin, a digital currency. The police claimed to have nabbed two culprits, including Rana Irfan Mehmood, the prime accused, but according to sources the actual circumstances and factors leading to the incident are not yet known. Also, it is said that the criminals are still at large and not a penny has been recovered. All of which puts a huge question mark on the performance of the investigation wing of the Lahore police.

The police are keeping the arrest of the two suspects under wraps, in the name of investigation.

The incident has earned Pakistan a bad name internationally and shown how unsafe the foreigners are in this part of the world. It has also shown that organised criminal gangs still operate in the city, despite claims made by the city police bosses about having ended them.

The FIR lodged under Section 395 of the CrPC, with the Racecourse Police, Lahore, on February 2, says one Atta Ur Noor Saqib, a resident of Islamabad and translator of a local company, Stephan Ehrhardt of Switzerland and Magerwin Maria Spari of Germany were visiting Lahore when they were kidnapped and robbed of bitcoin and other currency worth millions of rupees.

The complainant, on behalf of the foreign nationals, told the police that the prime suspect, identified as Rana Irfan Mehmood, had already met Ehrhardt and Spari in Germany and invited them to Lahore for an investment deal.

Mehmood had planned a big heist. He and his accomplices picked up the guests and their staff who were staying at a local five-star hotel, on the pretext of showing them around. They were instead taken to some undisclosed location where some unidentified people joined them. Later, in the presence of a bunch of armed men disguised as police, they were tricked into being involved (falsely) in drug smuggling. The victims saw no choice but to transfer cryptocurrency worth Rs 14.7 million to one of the kidnappers’ account. Later, upon getting reassurances, the kidnappers left them at a taxi stand.

At the time of writing this article, the Gujranwala police had claimed to have arrested two of Mehmood’s accomplices and handed them over to Lahore police for further investigation.

When contacted, the complainant (Atta Ur Noor) told TNS that to his knowledge the prime accused hadn’t been arrested yet. “I’ve come to know that Irfan [Mehmood] is still at large, and may have escaped abroad. However, the police are working on the case and I am hopeful that they will soon make a breakthrough.”

He said that the police investigation team, led by DSP Rana Zahid, had “so far not been able to recover the looted money. The ease with which the crime was committed shows that they were an organised gang [of criminals].”

According to Investigations SSP, Abdul Ghaffar Qaisrani, the police are working day in, day out to resolve the mystery and should soon be able to arrest all the culprits.

“The investigations are under way. It would be counterproductive to divulge details in this regard,” he added.

The writer is a senior journalist and can be reached at ahsanzia155@gmail.com