Five-year-old boy’s murder stuns Islamabad
RANSOM PLOT GOES AWRY; KIN AMONG FIVE HELD
Kidnapped for ransom, his bound body was found in cupboard
Every day after playing in the street, five-year-old Umer used to sit outside his house, on a pedestal close to the gate and wait for his father’s return.
“He was a darling of the street and everyone in the neighbourhood adored him,” Gohar Shafique Rathore, a cousin of Umer Rathore told
Gulf News yesterday.
His kidnapping for ransom, and eventual murder, has left everyone grieving, not only in the residential colony of Dhok Jillani, Islamabad’s Bhara Kahu area, but also in the rest of the federal capital. His body was recovered from a house in the capital.
Gohar, 31, said Umer was the youngest of six, three sisters and three brothers, and was in pre-nursery at Islamabad’s OPF school in Sector F-8/3.
On December 21, Umer was sitting at the same place on the pedestal when a relative took him away in a car.
And then began the worst nightmare any parent can imagine.
According to Bhara Kahu police, Umer’s hands and legs were tied and masking tape was wrapped around his face that choked the boy to death. “His kidnappers had bundled the boy in a cupboard inside which he died,” said the investigation officer of the case.
Five persons, including a cousin of the victim, have been arrested in connection with the kidnapping and murder case, he added.
According to Aurangzeb, the victim’s maternal grandfather, Umer never trusted strangers and when he disappeared at around 4.30pm on Saturday, no one noticed. However, when night fell, his family members got increasingly concerned. The entire neighbourhood started searching for the child and the local police was also involved.
Police started a combing operation in the green belts, as Bhara Kahu is a hilly area and there are several ditches close by.
However, by 8.30pm Umer’s father Mukhtar Rathore — an employee of Pakistan’s Oil & Gas Development Company (OGDCL) — said his son had not gone missing, but had been kidnapped.
Door-to-door search
The police carried out a door-to-door search. Sniffer dogs were also used but without success.
On Tuesday, the police picked up a man who confessed to kidnapping the boy, and also disclosed the location where the boy had been kept in the custody of one of his accomplices, only a 15-minute walk away.
He also identified three others, including a relative and a neighbour of the boy, who had transported the child from his house to the location. However, fearing police’s door-to-door search, the suspects fled from the location, leaving the child locked in the cupboard. By the time the police reached, Umer was dead.
After autopsy, the body was taken for burial in the family’s ancestral village of Forward Kahuta, in the Haveli district of Pakistan administered Kashmir.