ISLAMABAD - The Islamabad police have recovered around twenty-five million rupees robbed from the house of a National Highway Authority’s office but at the same time, it raises serious questions about the conduct and source of the income of said officer who paid only Rs200, 125 as a tax in last year.
The story began with a complaint lodged by the General Manager NHA Ikram Us Saqlain Haider in 10th January 2019 in Kohsar Police Station in which he had claimed that his housemaid named Zeenat Yaqoob stole an amount of Rs7, 115,000, prize bounds worth of Rs960, 000 and six gold bangles. He claimed that the stolen amount and jewelry belongs to her mother, who had died a few months ago.
He explained in his complaint that he had already recovered Rs3,075,000 from the bag of his housemaid while she also admitted to giving Rs1,000,000 to one of his cousin named Murtaza. The officer requested Kohsar police to lodge a case against Zeenat Yaqoob, her father and other family members to recover the remaining amount and gold bangles.
But, the story took a sharp turn here as his housemaid Zeenat Yaqoob during the investigation not only admitted the robbery of the aforementioned amount but while going beyond that she also confessed to stealing more than fifty million rupees cash from the house of Ikram us Saqlain Haider in last few months.
Zeenat Yaqoob informed police that she was in love with her cousin named Murtaza whom she had delivered Rs1,000,000 but he was not willing to marry her. The housemaid revealed further that she contacted a self-proclaimed spiritual leader named Shakil Ahmed Sabri allies Syed Burhan Shah Wali of Faisalabad to mild her boyfriend.
Sources inside the police station informed this scribe that Zaneet Yaqoob confessed that she gave approximately fifty million rupees to said fake spiritual leader to get his boyfriend but in installments and all the amount was stolen from the house of Ikram us Saqlain Haider.
In response, the Kohsar Police with the help of arrested lady managed to book the fake spiritual leader via a trap operation in Islamabad who also admitted his crime and returned an amount of Rs 21,600,000.
The investigating officer in the case Assistant Sub Inspector Muhammad Akram Ranjha told the Nation that police have arrested Murtaza and Peer Burhan and recovered around twenty-five million rupees from them. Though the police have recovered the stolen amount but at the same time, it raises serious questions regarding the presence of such a huge amount of cash currency in the house of a government officer.
The officer was uncertain about the volume of amount theft as he claimed around 8.1 million in his complaint while recovery was much greater than that amount.
According to the tax details of Ikram us Saqlain Haider, he had only paid Rs134,391, Rs202,560, and Rs200,125 in the year 2015, 2016 and 2017 respectively.
However, according to the sources, the arrested lady revealed that millions of rupees were stashed in the house of NHA’s officer but he never bothered to even calculate the amount.
When contacted, the officer has responded that the entire stolen amount belongs to her demised mother and he did not even check or calculate the same since her death in January 2018.
“My mother owned rental properties in Sargodha and Peshawar and we never asked her for money”, he maintained, clarifying: “She was an old lady and not used to deposit the receipts into bank accounts.”
When questioned why he did not take mother’s belongings into his custody after her death, he responded that he is still in trauma after losing his beloved mother.
It is pertinent to mention here that the officer was requested to provide the assets and tax details of his mothers but he did not provide the same till filing of this story besides repeated requests.
Haider is a grade-19 officer of NHA and appointed as General Manager Road Asset Management Directorate and generally considered as a decent officer. His colleagues informed that he is a lonely son of a retired bureaucrat and the son in law of a former High Court judge.
However, they were of the view that besides her mother’s assets, the presence of huge cash sums in a government officer’s house needs to be investigated thoroughly.