ISLAMABAD: Islamabad Inspector General of Police (IGP) Qazi Jamilur Rehman said on Monday evidence collected by Pakistani authorities did not “corroborate” the claim that the Afghan ambassador’s daughter was abducted.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani on Sunday recalled the Afghan ambassador and other diplomats in Islamabad until Pakistan punished the culprits behind what he said was the abduction and assault of the daughter of Kabul’s ambassador in Islamabad.
Silsila Alikhil, the daughter of Afghan envoy Najibullah Alikhil, has said she was abducted in the middle of the Pakistani capital of Islamabad on Friday, held for several hours and brutally attacked.
Speaking at a press conference on Monday, Rehman said police had analyzed all footage of the movement of the Afghan ambassador’s daughter on Friday.
“We used all our resources for the investigation ... and supported all law enforcement agencies,” he was quoted by Pakistani media as saying. “Impression given [about her abduction] is not corroborated by the evidence we have collected.”
— Radio Pakistan (@RadioPakistan) July 19, 2021
Rehman said police had interviewed more than 200 people in the case after examining CCTV footage: “The woman first leaves from her home on foot, then she hires a taxi from Rana Market and heads to Khadda Market. We subsequently identified the taxi and located its driver and interrogated him,” Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper quoted Rehman as saying.
The police chief said the envoy’s daughter then hired a second cab from Khadda Market and drove to Rawalpindi: “We traced the second taxi and its driver confirmed that he picked up the woman from the market and dropped her off at Saddar, Rawalpindi. We also obtained its footage.”
The envoy’s daughter then hailed another cab from Rawalpindi to reach the Daman-i-Koh point in Islamabad: “Upon reaching there, she hired a fourth taxi for F-9, but made a brief stopover at F-6,” Rehman said, adding that the driver of the last taxi told police the women asked him to stop the car in the F-6 sector, and then made a phone call to someone which did not go through. She then asked to be taken to F-9, the police chief said.
After the cab finally reached F-9, Rehman said, the woman called someone at the Afghan embassy and a staffer picked her up.
On Sunday, Pakistani interior minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said the culprits involved in the abduction of Afghanistan’s ambassador to Pakistan would be arrested within the next 72 hours.
A hospital medical report said Alikhil suffered blows to her head, had rope marks on her wrists and legs and was badly beaten. There was a suspicion that she had several broken bones and X-rays were ordered, the report said.
The report also said her abductors held her for over five hours and that she was brought to the hospital in Islamabad by police. No details have been released so far about the abduction itself or the circumstances of her release.
Relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan are fraught with suspicion and animosity. The two nations routinely trade accusations, with Afghanistan saying Pakistan is sending thousands of militants to fight in Afghanistan and providing safe haven for the Afghan Taliban. Pakistan in turn accuses Kabul of harboring the anti-Pakistani group Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan — the Pakistani Taliban — and also the secessionist Balochistan Liberation Army. Both nations deny the accusations.
