11 serial killing suspects arrested

By Shahnawaz Khan

LAHORE: Two suspected members of a former serial killers gang Danda Group and nine others have been arrested and are being questioned by a special team of the Crime Investigation Agency (CIA), sources told Daily Times on Friday.

Sources said the CIA team apprehended two key members of the Danda Group, Muhammad Siddique and Tariq Malang, from a village of Narowal district. Both the suspects had also been arrested in 2003 on a tip-off by Liaqat Ali, another member of the Danda Group, but later released. The police are also questioning nine other serial killing suspects.

Sources said that autopsies and forensic reports of the serial killing victims had confirmed that the culprits tried to throw the investigators off the scent with regard to the weapons used for the crime. Initially it was reported that they used bricks or large stones to kill people.

“At the scene of each crime police found a large stone weighing up to 25 kilograms and smeared with blood. But if these stones had been used to kill the people, the victims’ heads would have been completely smashed. Small hammers might have been used in these assaults,” sources said.

Dr Usman Anwar, City Division police superintendent (SP), who also headed one of the six special police teams formed to trace serial killers, said that the camera installed outside his office had a recording of the whole night between July 1 and 2, when the serial killers did their last crime and killed two people - one in front of the SP Office and the other in front of the office of the senior superintendent of police (SSP) for operations.

He said that the investigators were using the recording to find some clue about the culprits. He said that the camera installed at his office covered some part of the Rattigan Road where the serial killers killed a man. The SP said that the police could check all those who went towards the road or came from that side on the night of incident.

Home | National