The attempted assassination of a DawnNewsTV The journalist was frustrated after the arrest of the suspects by the police, the case investigator (IO) confirmed on Thursday.
Sub-inspector Nabeel Haider said three suspects had been hired to kill Rawalpindi-based journalist Tahir Naseer for Rs 200,000.
“They (the suspects) guarded Naseer’s house for three days,” the IO said, adding that they had also received Rs 99,000 in his bank account and one of the suspects acquired weapons.
“Police arrested the three suspects and seized their vehicle and weapons near Naseer’s house,” the IO added. “They were produced before the district magistrate, who rejected the application for physical remand and instead sent the suspects to judicial remand.”
In a first information report (FIR) filed on Wednesday under Section 120B (Punishment of criminal conspiracy) of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC), Naseer said that around 4 pm he received a phone call from his cousin saying that suspicious people were asking about him at a local bakery.
“When I arrived at tandoor“I saw a white car with three youths,” Naseer claimed in the FIR. “My cousin told me that they had been asking about me and showing my photo. While they were asking around, they said their names were Ahmed, Akash and Vishal.”
Naseer stated in the FIR that the apparent reason for the attempt was a vlog he posted about a private company and later also reported on DawnNewsTV on the same topic.
“I filed a case against them (the business owners) under the Electronic Crimes Prevention Act and the PPC,” he said. “Then they started threatening me on WhatsApp through international numbers,” the journalist added.
Journalists and media professionals will face an increasingly difficult landscape for freedom of expression in 2025, according to a report by the Pakistan Press Foundation.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has ranked Pakistan as one of the deadliest countries in the world for journalists due to its high rate of impunity for journalist killers.
According to a report by the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI), 87 journalists were murdered in Pakistan between 2006 and 2023, and only two of those cases were “solved.”
