ISLAMABAD: Islamabad police have arrested the suspect in the murder of a Pakistan Air Force (PAF) officer while he was trying to protect a woman, the Islamabad police chief announced on Sunday night, hours after the incident.
The shooting occurred near Shaheen Chowk on Islamabad’s busy 9th Avenue that is located close to several government offices and the PAF Headquarters, according to Islamabad police spokesman Muhammad Taqi Jawad.
The PAF officer, Group Captain Asim Tariq, left his office when he noticed a man arguing with a woman and decided to intervene, but the suspect, Saad Abbasi, shot the officer and fled the scene. The PAF officer later succumbed to his injuries.
Islamabad Inspector General (IG) Ali Nasir Rizvi said the suspect was trying to forcefully take the woman with him, but the woman kept hitting him repeatedly, prompting the air force officer to intervene to save the woman.
“Eleven teams were constituted to trace this case. There was a digital surveillance team, there was a cellular technology team, there was a private cameras team, there was a safe city cameras team. There were also teams that had to manually conduct raids. In addition to that, there were also teams that went to different districts or places,” he said.
“At the same time, it was necessary to blend it with technical data, which is our traditional approach to policing, in such a way that this case can be traced out... We analyzed [footage from] 275 safe city cameras in Islamabad and Rawalpindi and hundreds of private cameras. After this incident, this case was traced within nine hours.”
The suspect worked with the woman at a departmental store in Islamabad and had offered to give her a ride to the workplace. The woman resisted when the suspect tried to take her elsewhere, leading to an altercation, according to the police official.
After fleeing the crime scene, the suspect changed his shirt, switched off his phone number and tried to flee the city.
“We finally traced the suspect and came to know that the suspect had earlier done the same with another woman,” the IG said. “Instead of coming to the police station, their families had settled the matter.”
Group Captain Tariq is survived by his wife and two children, according to a PAF spokesperson.
IG Rizvi hailed the slain officer as a “true patriot,” saying he did what anyone else would have done in such a situation.
