The three gunmen forced a car carrying a Hindu filmmaker to stop along a bumpy street, then injected him and his driver with a sedative.
The driver woke up a few hours later. The filmmaker was gone.
Six months later, in April, Satish Anand was recovered in Bannu in northwest Pakistan, said an official involved in negotiating his release. He is one of the most prominent Pakistanis yet to be abducted, and militants are suspected.
The rise in kidnappings comes as a foundering economy leads more people to commit crimes in this country of 170 million people. It’s also a result of the overall erosion of security as Pakistan faces spreading Islamist militancy. Criminals are suspected in most kidnappings, but the Taliban and other militant groups are thought to earn a slice of the money — possibly millions of dollars, officials say.
Police say militants and criminals are hard to separate, making it difficult to trace the money obtained through ransoms. Some criminals call themselves Taliban to inject more fear into negotiations.
“There’s a nexus between these miscreants, these militants and the criminals,” said Malik Naveed Khan, top police official for the North West Frontier Province. “The police do not have enough resources to fight militancy and crime at the same time.”
Although there have been some high-profile kidnappings of foreigners, including the eventually recovered UN employee John Solecki, most abductions target Pakistanis.
The kidnapping wave is especially acute in Peshawar and Karachi, two major cities that have long been magnets for militants.
Peshawar is the main town in Pakistan’s northwest, a region along the Afghan border that is most troubled by the insurgency.
Businessmen and entertainers are favorite targets.
The number of kidnapping for ransom cases registered in the North West Frontier Province rose from 57 in 2006 to 147 last year, police said. So far this year, 71 cases have been recorded in the region.
Last year, a 27-year-old male model from Peshawar decided things had gotten so tense that he started to carry a pistol to protect himself. It came in handy months later, when three men grabbed him and shoved him into a car.
“I was just like: ‘What’s happening?’” he said, his eyes welling with tears. “At first, I was just blank. Then I realized I had my gun. I pulled it out, put it at the back of the driver’s head and threatened to blow a hole in it.”
The men pushed him out of the car.
He asked to remain anonymous because of security fears.
The southern port city of Karachi is also a prime hunting ground for kidnapping rings because it is home to many of the business elite. It is Pakistan’s most populous city, with more than 16 million people.
The Citizens Police Liaison Committee, a well-established and largely volunteer-run organization that works with police to retrieve abductees, said the number of kidnappings for ransom last year in the city was 92, up from 64 the previous year. In 2006, the figure was 28.
In any case, official statistics are probably too low. Many families don’t file complaints because of threats by the kidnappers.
Sharfuddin Memon, the head of the committee, gave the account of the kidnapping of the filmmaker, Anand, who is not speaking to the media.
In April, a young Karachi man belonging to a family involved in henna production was snatched.
He was at a factory when armed men showed up and took him. Then they called his family and threatened to kill him unless relatives paid a sum they couldn’t afford.
Days later, his father was still in shock.
“I am trying to stay strong. He is my only son,” the 51-year-old said.
He asked that his son’s and family’s name be kept confidential to avoid harming ongoing negotiations for his release.
So-called “short-term” kidnappings are also up, said Zubair Motiwala, a former president of the Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
In such kidnappings, the abductors grab someone and drive them around in a vehicle for a few hours while negotiating with relatives.
Kidnappings are probably fueled by an economy in such bad shape that it recently received a US$7.6 billion bailout from the IMF.
But it’s a vicious cycle: The security situation may continue to put off foreign investors and the economic situation that is pushing up crime rates may continue.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS