JAKARTA/KARACHI: The Indonesian police on Thursday repatriated a Pakistani fugitive who had been living in Asahan district of North Sumatra for the past two years and was arrested by the authorities on Tuesday.
The 34-year-old man, identified as Muhammad Luqman Butt, alias Husein Shah or M. Firman, was flown from Medan to Jakarta, where he was handed over to the Pakistani police in the presence of officials from the Pakistan embassy, Secretary of the National Central Bureau of Interpol, Indonesia, Brig. Gen. Napoleon Bonaparte told Arab News.
This photograph released by Tribunnews shows Muhammad Luqman Butt's Indonesian identity card, top, bearing the name M. Firman with his photo and citing Asahan as his place of birth, and his driver’s license. (Photo courtesy: Tribunnews)
“We received the red notice from the Interpol that he was on the wanted list. We detected that he was in North Sumatra, so the Pakistani police coordinated with us and we cooperated with our colleagues in the province to arrest him on Tuesday,” Bonaparte said.
However, he refused to confirm the offense Butt had committed, saying it was not the jurisdiction of Indonesian police to probe the Pakistani fugitive further.
According to police sources in Pakistan, Luqman had five different cases registered against him in three different police stations of the eastern city of Gujranwala. He was suspected of committing two murders, and the Pakistani authorities had announced a bounty of Rs200,000 ($1293) on his head.
“We did what we had to do as part of our commitment to being a member of Interpol. We detected, located, arrested, and handed the fugitive over to his home country’s law enforcement officials,” Bonaparte said, adding that he hoped his Pakistani counterparts would extend the Indonesian police the same cooperation should an Indonesian fugitive was detected to be on the run in Pakistan.
Police report shows there are five different cases registered against Luqman in Gujranwala, a district in Punjab. (Source: Punjab Police)
National Police Spokesman Brig. Gen. Argo Yuwono told Arab News that Butt was arrested on Tuesday from his rented house in Asahan where he had been living with his 33-year-old Indonesian wife, Evi Lili Midati, for the past five months.
Both the fugitive and his wife had been detained at the North Sumatra police headquarters in Medan. During questioning, Butt confessed to have murdered a family in his home country.
“He has been in Indonesia for the past two years and was living in Asahan for the last five months with his wife whom he had married in Medan a year ago,” Yuwono said.
He entered the country from Malaysia on a wooden boat and had traveled to different parts of Indonesia before he decided to settle in Asahan where he worked as a driver, having obtained an Indonesian driver’s license with his fake identity.
The police seized from Butt’s residence his Indonesian identity card bearing the name M. Firman and citing Asahan as his place of birth, a driver’s license, and his marriage certificate.
