Peshawar police identify four suspects in NADRA official's killing
CCTV footage traced the men's arrival at the scene, their movement in the area and the route they took afterwards, police sources say.
Peshawar police have identified four men suspected of shooting dead Fahad Khan, an assistant director of the National Database and Registration Authority, and the man they describe as the main suspect in the case, police sources told Aaj News.
The identifications were made with the help of CCTV footage and other technical evidence, the sources said. Investigators have also established how the four men reached the scene, how they moved around the area beforehand and which route they took to escape, according to the same account. The four were riding two motorcycles.
Aaj News reported that Khan usually travelled to the office in a bulletproof vehicle with personal guards, but that on the day he was killed he was on his way to the office alone. The attackers followed him from the University Town area and opened fire after carrying out reconnaissance of the area several times, the sources said.
Express News reported that Khan reached Hayatabad in a bulletproof vehicle, a detail it carried in its account of the investigation team's findings.
A senior police officer did not name the suspects, and no arrests had been reported in the accounts published by either outlet. Police said the killing appeared to stem from an old family feud, and that raids were being mounted at several possible hideouts to catch the men.
Authorities have blocked the computerised national identity cards of the alleged suspects. With fears that they may try to leave the country, an alert has been issued at all border routes and airports.
NADRA, the federal body that issues identity cards and holds the national citizens' database, has not issued a statement on the case in the reports published so far.
Khan's killing is the second attack on a senior official in the provincial capital to be investigated through footage from private and government cameras in recent months, though the two cases are not linked in either report.
Peshawar has seen a series of targeted shootings of government employees over the past year, most of them claimed by no group and attributed by police to personal disputes, criminal gangs or militancy. Investigations in several of those cases have stalled after arrests failed to produce convictions.
The value of the CCTV evidence in Khan's case, the police sources said, lies in what it shows about the preparation: the repeated passes through the neighbourhood before the shooting and the speed with which the attackers left. Both outlets reported that the investigation team was working from that footage rather than from witness testimony.
How the reports differ
Aaj News reported that Fahad Khan normally travelled to work in a bulletproof vehicle with personal guards but was alone on the day he was killed, and it alone carried the police suggestion that the motive was a long-standing family feud, the blocking of the suspects' identity cards and the alert at airports and borders. Express News, in its standfirst, said Khan had come as far as Hayatabad in a bulletproof vehicle, without saying whether he had guards with him. Both outlets reported the identification of four suspects from CCTV footage as the main development.
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