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Army recovers High Court chief justice's abducted son from NW Pakistan

Xinhua, July 19, 2016 Adjust font size:

Pakistani army recovered the abducted son of a provincial High Court chief justice in an operation launched near the country's northwest Tank district, officials said Tuesday.

Advocate Owais Ali Shah, the son of the chief justice of the High Court of the country's south Sindh province, was kidnapped from the provincial capital of Karachi on June 20 this year.

Asim Bajwa, director general of the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), Pakistani army's media wing, said in a Tuesday morning tweet that the troops carried out an intelligence-based operation in the Tank district of the country's northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, during which three militants were killed and Owais was recovered safely.

He did not mention the nature of the operation, but local Urdu TV channels said that the army men tried to stop a suspected car carrying three men and a "woman" wearing a burqa, a tradition black dress worn by women covering them from head to toe, at a security checkpost for snap checking.

The men inside the car tried to flee the scene by opening fire on the troops who gave a befitting response and gunned down all the three men inside, but saved the woman who turned out to be Shah whose kidnappers ordered him to wear the women's dress for hiding his identity.

The army men were checking the vehicles at the checkpost after receiving a tip-off by the intelligence agencies regarding Shah's possible shifting to Afghanistan through tribal areas by the kidnappers.

Shah was later airlifted from Tank to Karachi's airbase in a special aircraft and drove back to his home by a senior army officer.

The country's army chief, General Raheel Sharif commended the army for the successful operation and congratulated the Chief Justice for the recovery of his son.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif also called the chief justice to congratulate him.

Kidnapping of the chief justice's son was a continuation of the abduction of influential people's children for ransom or exchange of prisoners.

Earlier, the militants kidnapped ex-PM Yousaf Raza Gillani and governor of Punjab province Salman Taseer's sons, both of whom were recovered after three and five years respectively. Endit