In the recent past, Islamabad’s law and order took a new turn when a man wearing a helmet and carrying a Kalashnikov on his shoulder arrived on a motorcycle in broad daylight and opened firing indiscriminately to escape with cash from parked bank cash vans.
Sounds “filmy”, but not for those who were victims of his shooting. Among them was Mir Haider Khattak of Nowshera. He had planned to step out of the hotel where he worked to pick up supplies from a warehouse.
But as he exited the hotel located in Sector G-9 of Islamabad, a stray bullet tragically took his life. Another individual was killed while three others sustained injuries. They are under treatment at PIMS Hospital. Haider worked as a waiter at a local restaurant. According to its owner Abdul Majid, the victim was the only brother to five sisters and had been employed there for the past five years.
On Monday, the Islamabad police claimed to have put an end to the crime spree by arresting the suspect and recovering the stolen money and the weapon used in the crimes.
The suspect attempted to rob cash vans outside various banks over two days last week, succeeding in two of the attempts while failing in two others.
He had allegedly committed a bank robbery in Sector G-15 on October 28 and shot at a cash van, in addition to robbing banks located in Sectors G-9 and G-14 on October 29.
“The suspect was apprehended in the Punjab city of Sargodha,” the deputy inspector general (DIG) of Islamabad told reporters in the federal capital.
Rukhsar Mehdi, the head of the investigative team for the case, claimed that the suspect was captured using modern technology.
“We tracked the suspect using geo-fencing and the mobile phones that were operational at the location,” he explained.
But a member of the Islamabad police’s joint investigation team, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told the BBC that the suspect was caught due to his “distinctive white sneakers.”
It was revealed that the robbery suspect was living in an informal settlement around Islamabad. They proceeded to examine various neighbourhoods, focusing on homes that had locked doors.
When they broke into one such house, officers discovered white joggers identical to those worn by the suspect during the robbery, as seen in the CCTV footage.
A member of the JIT revealed that another door in the same house was also locked and, despite efforts, police were unable to force it open initially. Eventually, they managed to break the lock and found the motorcycle used in the robbery inside. They also recovered the Kalashnikov used in Haider’s killing.
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According to the DIG of Islamabad, the suspect is 24 years old and has been living in Islamabad for the past four to five years. Police officials report that he has completed his high school education and has three brothers, one of whom is an imam.
Authorities claim that the suspect has ties to a religious political party.
Mehdi told the news outlet that the suspect was “well-acquainted with all the streets and routes in Islamabad and had been inspired by movies to carry out the robberies.”
