Police vow no fear or favour in foreigners’ kidnap case

DIG Operations Kamran Faisal (centre) addresses a press conference in Lahore.—Dawn

• DIG confirms role of ‘high-profile individual’, says all will be ‘treated like criminals’
• Sources say all eight suspects behind bars; victims departed the country on July 3
• ‘Big boss’ caught in injured condition after he jumps off 2nd storey of villa during raid

LAHORE: Confirming the involvement of the relative of a government minister in a case involving the alleged abduction and sexual assault of two foreign national women in Lahore, police on Sunday vowed that they would pursue the investigation in the case without any fear or favour.

The vow came from Lahore DIG Operations Kamran Faisal at a press conference on Sunday, as police officials investigating the case told Dawn that all eight suspects nominated in the case, including two high-profile individuals, had been arrested.

At the presser, DIG Faisal shared the sequence of events that led to the recovery of women and the arrest of several individuals, amid reports that the women had arrived in Pakistan to finalise a crypto deal with the suspects.

“We carried out raids in Sargodha and several other locations; at the same time, when we found the family tree of one of the suspects and after speaking to inhabitants at one of the raided houses, it emerged that the family of the suspect used to live in the house some time back on rent and were probably related to the deputy prime minister and foreign minister,” he said.

The DIG said they confirmed the information from the family and got the number of the suspect as well, which was used by the police to trace his location.

DIG Faisal said that after the involvement of a high-profile individual surfaced during the investigation, they apprised the senior command and the government of this connection. “We received strict orders from the government to treat him no differently than any other criminal,” he said, adding that it also emerged that there may be a “criminal gang” behind the incident rather than an individual suspect.

The police official also dismissed speculations that the police were not involved in the recovery of the women, who have since flown out of Pakistan. “We have the record of a 15 [police helpline] call at 12:40, after which subsequent action was taken, contact was established with the individual from Spain, and locations were traced,” he recalled, stressing that the police’s background work ensured the recovery of the foreign nationals.

He stressed that the police sought the consent of the two women victims for their medical examination with the help of their respective embassies. He recalled that the women were reluctant to have their statements recorded, due to their flight scheduled for July 2, but the Lahore police committed to compensate them for the revised tickets. The two then departed Pakistan on July 3, he said.

He also recalled an “unfortunate” incident in which a station house officer (SHO) forcibly entered the official residence of the magistrate concerned for recording the statements of two foreign women. DIG Faisal apologised to the judiciary for the incident, but he still defended the move, saying that “if that had not happened, our media and international forums would have raised questions over our legal system”. “…we have taken action against the SHO as well,” he added.

According to the DIG, the police’s “next test” was to ensure that there remained no legal loophole that could be exploited by the suspects in their favour.

All men behind bars

The detained suspects incl­uded two relatives of the senior federal minister, one ‘notorious goon’ who was described as the ‘big boss’ by the women in their testimony, and three security guards, among others, an official linked to the probe told Dawn.

The so-called ‘big boss’, who worked behind the scenes and gave instructions to the suspect via phone, was arrested by the police from his hideout in DHA Phase 9 in an injured condition. The police official told Dawn that the suspect was a ‘notorious goon’ and offered services like kidnapping for ransom.

When police arrived at his rented villa in DHA, the suspect supposedly jumped off the second floor of the house, the official said. However, he survived with multiple fractures.

During a brief interrogation, the suspect told the police that he had played a “major role” in managing the private security staff to allegedly execute the plan hatched by the other accomplices to kidnap the women for ransom. The police also obtained the record of his conversations with the alleged rapists and other suspects from his phone, which confirmed that he was acting as a ‘big boss’ as described by the women.

According to the official, the police arrested the suspects when they were taking the women to an unknown destination in a car. To a question as to how the suspects and the girls were traced, he said that the police had managed to obtain the ‘live location’ of the prime suspect, probably through his close relative.

Following the location, he claimed the police raided and rescued the women, besides arresting the suspects, when they found the car alongside a road in DHA.

Sharing more details, the official said that the prime suspect, closely linked to a senior minister, had met one of the victim girls for the first time at a conference held in Singapore in 2025 where both sides decided to run a cryptocurrency business.

He invested $60,000 and received a profit of $20,000 in return. In December 2025, he invested $500,000 but did not receive any money against his second investment. Following the rift, the official said the suspect allegedly decided to teach his female partner a lesson and asked her to visit Pakistan for another major business deal.

The suspect reportedly prepared another relative (also arrested by the police) to portray him as a ‘dummy investor, he added.

For this business deal, the police official said, the women landed in Islamabad on June 26 and arrived in Lahore on June 29.

However, they were held against their will after they arrived in the provincial capital.

Published in Dawn, July 6th, 2026 ...