City becomes safe haven for kidnappers for ransom

Source pointed out that the first case of robbery had taken place here in Sadder Town, Electronics market, where the Taliban’s affiliated group Harkat-ul-Mujahidin robbed an electronic shop and took away walky-talky and other corresponding stuff and sent the looted stuff to Taliban. The said group’s 10 members had been arrested on eight Muharram last year.

A similar group had been busted in Shah Latif encounter in which some three accomplices were killed and two arrested. The gang had looted a number of banks and sent looted amount to their commander Hamza Jufi an Al-Qaeda operative settled in Wana, Waziristan.

SP CID Fiyaz Khan while talking to The Nation said that robberies and kidnapping was not a new phenomenon and the law enforcement agencies had cut off other routes of getting money.

They have a number of other resources such as collection of donations from mosques and markets, but a ban had already been imposed on the collection of donations by the militants. Police have arrested a number of activists during collections thus they ruled out their norms and started robberies and kidnapping. Such kind of activities were not happening in Karachi only, but this type of incidents were be reported in Lahore and Peshawar, Fiyaz Khan said.

He added that the biggest businessmen were also being blackmailed by Taliban and they were paying money as extortion to Talibans’ wrath. He further pointed out that some rich victims had got their ransom money back after approaching Baitullah Mehsood as they were already sending him funds regularly. It is, however, still unclear whether or not Baitullah Mehsud is still alive, because some sources are claiming that the BM had died before Eid, while some say he was still alive.

In a statement issued before Eid, NWFP Chief Minister had also claimed that Baitullah Mehsud had died.