KARACHI: In wake of the growing number of victims in the mysterious Karachi ‘knife attacks’, the police in a bid to catch the culprit took a man into custody on Sunday on suspicion of attacking multiple women in the past weeks.
According to details, the suspect Noman had claimed on Saturday to have been attacked by the notorious ‘knife-wielding motorcyclist’, who has attacked only women so far, but later informed the police that he had been hit by a rod.
“The man has taken a lie-detector test and further investigations are underway,” SSP East said. He added that the suspect’s appearance fits the description of the knife attacker issued earlier by the police.
The SSP also informed that the police have arrested four new suspects in different raids across the city.
According to sources, the doctors who treated the injured man say that his wounds indicated self-injury.
The attack is closely timed with a series of similar incidents in Karachi’s Gulistan-e-Jauhar, Gulshan-e-Iqbal, and Gulshan-e-Jamal vicinities.
Fifteen women in the metropolis have been attacked since September 25 when the first incident was reported by a knife-wielding ‘lone wolf’.
The suspect, who has posed quite a challenge to the authorities, remains at large, evading arrest and baffling authorities after a fresh spate of knife attacks on women, concentrated mainly in Gulistan-e-Jauhar and Gulshan-e-Iqbal areas.
Karachi police had also released pictures which were screengrabs from the CCTV footage of the suspect wherein the assailant can be seen riding a motorbike moments before attacking one of the victims.
“The suspect appears to be a thin man, aged 20-29,” DIG East Sultan Khawaja said, adding that “he appears to be 5 feet, 7-9 inches tall and usually rides a red motorcycle.”
The case had also earlier been handed over to the Counter Terrorism Department (CTD), which has deployed a case team to work on ways to capture the suspect according to sources.
Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah on Friday claimed that the suspect had been identified and was believed to be the same person who was behind similar attacks in Punjab’s Chichawatni area, where 50 women were injured in knife attacks over three years since 2013.