KARACHI: Abdul Jabbar’s relatives had gathered at his residence to attend his daughter’s wedding on Friday. The ceremony was about to commence when a police contingent arrived at the house and broke the news that they had found the youngest member of the family, Muhammad Yasin, who had gone missing two years ago.
The news should have doubled the joy of the occasion. However, it resulted in unspeakable pain when it turned out that Yasin was dead -– and officials of the law enforcement agency had only managed to identify his grave where they had found his skeleton.
“Time had healed the family’s wounds,” said Ali Hasan Sheikh, a police officer who interacted with Yasin’s father, while talking to Arab News on Sunday. “But time was also merciless, cutting the same wounds much deeper and inflicting unimaginable grief on everyone attending the festivity.”
Eighteen-year-old Yasin had gone missing on May 30, 2016. “His clothes helped the police identify his body,” said the officer. “His grave was found after we arrested a man who confessed to the gruesome murder and told us where he had buried the body. After conducting the postmortem, we sent some samples for DNA testing to a lab. Hopefully, it will further authenticate his identification.”
Yasin’s father had approached the police immediately after his son went missing. Yet its officials took some time to register the First Information Report (FIR), a legal procedure requiring the police to prepare a written document after a cognizable offense.
“It took me 25 days to get the FIR of my missing son lodged with the police,” Abdul Jabbar, a former football referee, told Arab News. “Ultimately, it was done on court orders.”
He added: “It has taken them two years to find my son. If they had done it before, we could have seen his face, not his bones. I know that police officials have finally been helpful. But they showed major apathy in the beginning.”
The bereaved father mentioned how difficult it was for him to be taken seriously by the police, even though they are required to help ordinary citizens.
“I was quite unwell and had lost 25 kilograms. I could not go to hospital since I was running from pillar to post to find out where my son was,” he said, adding that Yasin’s brutal killers should have thrown his body somewhere instead of concealing it from his family for two years.
“It was Asad, my son’s friend, who took him to his killers,” Jabbar said. “We did not realize that he was working for a gang. They killed my son and dumped his body in an agricultural land.”
According to police officials, the gang was part of a criminal group that was led by Uzair Jan Baloch of Lyari. The prime task of the gang was to sell drugs.
“Some of these criminals thought that Yasin was far too observant. Those were also the days when we caught several of these gang members. This created a suspicion that Yasin was a police informer or worked with some other law enforcement agency. It was in this context that they decided to get rid of him,” said Ali Hasan Sheikh, the policeman.
“They have not just killed one man like this,” he added. “We cannot disclose further details at this point. However, we are still working on a few other cases and fear that we may find dead bodies of some more missing persons in the foreseeable future.”
Senior Superintendent Police Abid Hussain Qaimkhani concurred with his subordinate officer. “It seems to be one of many such cases,” he said.
Qaimkhani added that when someone goes missing in the country, the law enforcement agencies are usually accused of picking them up. “But this specific case suggests it is important to investigate such cases from this angle as well. How can anyone say that a missing person was not killed and dumped by a criminal gang?”
Meanwhile, Yasin’s father is still trying to come to terms with this senseless loss.
“Being the youngest, he was everyone’s favorite in our family. Can you imagine the pain when your much loved, much-pampered child is killed brutally?” Jabbar, who has four other sons and two daughters, said, fighting back his tears.
Pointing toward his grave, Yasin’s cousin, Kafeel, said: “The only consolation we now have is that we can see him lying over there.”
