NANKANA SAHIB: A killing that had gone unsolved for six years in the farmland around Sangla Hill has been traced back to the victim’s own family, with the Crime Control Department announcing the arrest of the dead man’s nephew as the alleged mastermind of the murder.
According to an official statement issued by the CCD, Khan Mohammad, a resident of Kotla Kalan Chak No. 43, was shot dead six years ago by four unknown armed assailants. The department said its Nankana Sahib unit has now identified the victim’s real nephew, Sulaiman Muzafar, as the man who allegedly planned the killing, and has arrested him along with an accomplice named Ashraf, alias Pama.
An FIR was registered at Sangla Hill police station at the time of the murder at the behest of the deceased’s son, Imran. But the assailants were never identified, and the investigation stalled. The case fell into the category that police in Punjab describe as a “blind murder” — a killing in which investigators begin with neither a named suspect nor a usable evidentiary trail.
Such files are seldom formally closed. More often they simply stop moving, and the family is left with a question that no one in authority is actively working to answer. For Khan Mohammad’s relatives, that silence lasted six years.
CCD officials said the breakthrough was achieved through what the department described as scientific and technical investigation methods. The statement did not specify which techniques were applied, and the department has not made public the evidence on which the arrests were based.
The two suspects were taken into custody in a raid carried out under the supervision of Additional IG CCD Sohail Zafar Chatha, Regional Officer Dr. Abdul Hannan, and District Officer CCD Nankana Sahib Rai Ehsan Elahi.
The most striking element of the CCD’s account is the motive it attributes to the accused. According to officials, Sulaiman conspired to have his uncle killed so that his own rivals could be implicated in the murder — turning the death of a family member into an instrument against opponents in a personal feud.
It is an allegation that, if established in court, would explain why the original investigation went nowhere. Investigators looking outward at the usual circle of suspects would have had little reason to look inward at the household of the man who reported the crime.
Both men have been arrested, not convicted. The claims described here are those of the investigating agency and remain to be tested before a trial court, where the accused are entitled to the presumption of innocence.
The arrests come as the CCD, the youngest specialised arm of the Punjab Police, works to establish a track record. The department was approved by the Punjab government in early 2025 as a dedicated unit against organised crime, with its headquarters at Qurban Lines in Lahore and a sanctioned strength of 4,000 officers and personnel. Sohail Zafar Chatha was appointed to head it.
Under the framework announced at the time, each district in Punjab was to have a dedicated CCD police station, with three in Lahore, and district police officers were empowered to transfer significant cases to the new department. Its stated mandate covers hardened criminals, kidnapping for ransom, extortion and major narcotics networks.
Cold cases are among the harder measures of such a unit. A recent arrest tests manpower and information; a six-year-old blind murder tests whether a department can reconstruct a crime after the physical scene, the witnesses and the local memory of it have all degraded.
The two men are expected to be produced before a court, where investigators will seek remand to complete the investigation and prepare a challan for prosecution. The real test lies there. Delayed cases carry a well-documented risk of weak prosecution and acquittal, and the strength of the CCD’s file will determine whether this arrest becomes a conviction or another entry in a long record of unfinished cases.
Families across rural Nankana Sahib living with unresolved killings of their own, the announcement carries a simple implication: a case that has gone quiet has not necessarily gone away.
–Additional reporting from the CCD’s official statement.
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