'Karachi gang' loots mobile shops

LAHORE - A Karachi-based gang of robbers looted two mobile shops of the Hall Road, a famous and very important sale point of electronic products in the City here early on Tuesday.
A police source said that after completing the target successfully, the ringleader of the said dacoit gang along with his some accomplices reached Karachi by air. His location was traced in Karachi through one of the mobile phones looted from the said shops. The said cell phone was owned by an employee of the affected shop, the police sources said.
Most of the outlaws of the said gang were identified as Karachi citizens through their accent during communication among them, the security guards told the police investigators while the others were Punjabi and Pathan.
Owners of the said two shops Muhammad Fayyaz and Nasir Jamshed estimated loss of around 250,0000 including cash, 150 mobile phones and calling cards. In protest against the armed robbery, the traders, shopkeepers and union representatives closed the Hall Road markets.
The protesting traders burnt tyres and blocked The Mall, Hall Road and the McLeod Road for traffic for at least three hours causing massive traffic jam.
A victim shop owner Nasir Jamshed told the scribe that at least a dozen robbers, all equipped with lethal weapons came on a mazda truck at around 4:00am and held up two security guards of the Qadri plaza.
They gagged them in the mazda truck covered from all sides with fabric sheets. Two of the outlaws were deployed inside the truck where they made the security guards hostage while the others entered the market. They first broke the locks of Mobile Tower, collected cash worth Rs415,500, calling cards and 93 mobile phones. The robbers later looted another adjacent shop Fayyaz Electronics.
He said that it was fourth robbery that took place at his shop.
The outlaws also took away a heavy safe carrying cash from the second shop of mobile phone. The shop owner Muhammad Fayyaz said that the said iron-made safe was especially arranged at the shop to avoid its theft from thieves and it was so heavy that it could not be removed easily by three to four people. The safe was installed to secure cash from the thieves, he said, adding that the robbers however took away it from the shop that was carrying cash Rs300,000. A police investigator said that the International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) numbers of all the looted mobile phones were not reported to the concerned department to make them inactive. The decision was taken in a meeting with the association of the Hall Road traders with a hope to trace the robbers through these mobile phones, he said.