Miscellaneous
Retired Pak colonel missing from Lumbini
A retired Pakistan Army officer has gone missing since three days from Lumbini while visiting Nepal for a job interview, reported Pakistani newspaper The Dawn.A retired Pakistan Army officer has gone missing since three days from Lumbini while visiting Nepal for a job interview, reported Pakistani newspaper The Dawn.
The officer, identified as retired Lt Col Mohammad Habib, has been untraceable after he last contacted his family on Thursday (April 6) afternoon and since then his phone numbers have not been reachable, stated the report.
The colonel, who reportedly retired in October 2014 and belonged to artillery, was currently employed with a private firm in Pakistan and had posted his CV online in search of employment.
Col Habib’s family reported his disappearance to the Foreign Office after not having been able to reach him. He is feared to have been abducted, said the report.
Quoting Pakistani charge d’affaires Javed Imrani , The Dawn reported, “We wrote to the Nepalese foreign ministry about the missing Pakistani national on Friday, but we are yet to hear back from them.” Likewise, Pakistani Foreign Office spokesperson Nafees Zakaria said that the matter has been raised with the Nepalese government and the Pakistani embassy in Nepal is in contact with the local authorities.
The report further states that according to the publicly available account of the events one person by the name of Mark Thompson had contacted him both via email and telephone for a job interview in Nepal for which he was also provided an air ticket. Col Habib departed from Lahore on Wednesday, reaching Kathmandu on Thursday from where he immediately flew to Lumbini. In Kathmandu, the information coming from retired army officers groups and verified by military sources reveals, he was provided a Nepalese cellphone SIM card by one Javed Ansari, who received him there. The last message that he sent from Lumbini said that he had reached his destination.
As per the Dawn report, the UK telephone number from which he had received telephone call for the interview was a computer-generated one, while the email domain and its associated website were registered in India. This has prompted concerns that the Indian spy agency RAW could have been behind the abduction plot, states the Pakistani newspaper.




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