Daily Times

The Lahore police claim to have arrested the culprits involved in the kidnapping of famed playwright Khalilur Rehman Qamar.

A day earlier, the writer had lodged a complaint against his kidnappers and requested the law-enforcement officials for help.

Police took immediate action and traced the suspects within hours. Among those arrested were Amina Urooj, Mamnoon Haider, Zeeshan Qayyum, Javed Iqbal, Tanveer Ahmed, Falaksher, Qaiser Abbas, Rashid Ahmed, Mian Khan, Babar Ali, Shumaila Bibi and Maryam Shahzadi.

“The main suspect, Amina, is a repeat criminal and has a history of committing similar crimes. Her modus operandi involves deceiving her victims by presenting herself as a British citizen, thereby gaining their trust before carrying out the robbery along with her associates,” say police.

In this regard, Organized Crime Unit DIG Imran Kishwar, along with the writer, held an important press conference to inform the public about the details.

The Lahore police on Sunday registered a case on the complaint of eminent writer Khalilur Rehman Qamar that he was kidnapped and tortured.

Qamar is a famous writer and has given the industry some major hits. He is also known to have some controversial views on a variety of subjects.

A woman named Amina had called Qamar to her house, saying she wanted to make a drama and when he reached the woman’s house, armed men kidnapped him. The Payare Afzal writer had to give a huge sum of money to the kidnappers for his release.

Later, the Sundar police registered a case on his statement.

In the FIR, it is mentioned that the accused kept on torturing Qamar and kept moving him to different places. They also threatened to kill him and asked him to request for more money from his relatives. Rehman alleged that the men confiscated Rs 60,000, an iPhone 11, an ATM card as well as his national identity card.

The FIR added that more than Rs 200,000 were also drawn from a separate bank account belonging to the complainant.

The kidnappers, the FIR states, told Rehman that they had been given the orders to kill him, before demanding a ransom payment of Rs 10 million, to which Rehman told them that he did not have that kind of funds available.