KARACHl: Police have detained the SHO of the Zaman Town police station and some policemen to investigate their involvement in snatching over Rs11 million from a local businessman, it emerged on Thursday.

Sachal SHO Ghulam Husain Korai told Dawn that SHO Rao Rafiq had `not been formally arrested but was made part of an investigation`.

He said businessman Mohammed Khan had lodged an FIR regarding snatching of Rs11.8m by unknown policemen, under sections 395 (punishment for dacoity) and 342 (wrongful confinement) of the Pakistan Penal Code.

However, the Sachal SHO said during initial investigations it had emerged that the Zaman Town SHO and other policemen had committed `some negligence` and thus they had been detained for interrogation.

Narrating his ordeal, the businessman informed the police that he, his partner Faisal and some others were travelling in two separate cars, carrying Rs11,800,000 cash in three bags.

They were on their way to his (the complainant`s) home in Naval Colony from Superhighway via Lyari Expressway when at around 4:20am on March 11, eight-nine policemen wearing uniforms and one in plain clothes in a police mobile and a silver-colour car stopped them at the junction of toll plaza on Lyari Expressway.

The uniformed policemen asked the complainant and others to come out from their cars, snatched their cell phones and started searching their vehicles. They locked the car of his partner Faisal, and snatched its key. Then they forcibly put him (the complainant) in his car`s backseat and one of the policemen held him at gunpoint, took him in his own car and left his partners and others there.

The complainant said the policemen blindfolded him and travelled for one-and-ahalf hours in the city. Then, they stopped the car, snatched the cash and fled after locking him inside his vehicle. Later, some passersby informed him that he was in North Nazimabad.

The businessman said that as the policemen did not take away his cell phone, he called his friends there and also obtained CCTV footage from the spot. The complainant said the uniformed policemen took away the cash in their car.