Nato’s stolen combat material seized near Islamabad

ISLAMABAD: Another godown laden with stolen items of Nato forces, including combat material, was unearthed in the capital’s rural area of Tarnol during a police raid on Saturday night.

Police sources told Dawn that the dealer of the stolen supplies of Nato sold the items to individuals and the large quantity of the items were purchased by militants. Four people were arrested during the raid.

Police had arrested four people and seized Nato items from another godown in the same loclitity on Friday night.

The Saturday raid was conducted in response to information gathered from the accused arrested on Friday.

Police and anti-terrorism squad personnel cordoned off the area of Dhok Paracha in Tarnol and raided the godown in a house and found a large quantity of items used by armed forces.

The seized items were: vehicles–four wheel DG-5 and six wheel DG-3–used as armed personnel carrier, accessories of helicopter, and other vehicles.

Besides, sophisticated equipments used during combat, communication system, wireless sets, heavy duty generators, mounts, motors, plastic boxes, almirahs, filters, vacuum cleaners, kit of mountain divers, stretchers, water bags, senior officer bags, shoes and gloves were also seized.

A senior police officer said that out of the four people arrested on Friday night, two were buyers and the two others owned the godown. The buyers had come from Landi Kotal to purchase generators and some other goods.

The godown owners told police that the transporters of Nato supplies unloaded the goods at their doorstep and any locality as convenient to them.

“Normally the transporters stole some items from the supplies and some times they unload the entire containers,” the officer quoted the accused as saying.

“Whenever, the entire container was stolen for them, the transporters set them in fire on the pretext of Taliban’s attack,” he said.

The officer said the accused revealed that there were more godown in Islamabad and other cities where huge quantity of stolen items of Nato supplies were kept.

He said the transporters get handsome amount to steal the goods from the supplies. He said the area was under police surveillance, which conducted search operation to unearth remaining godown in the locality.