Pak journalist working for Indian TV channel escapes abduction bid

A Pakistan-based reporter had a narrow escape after armed men tried to abduct him when he was travelling to the airport, on Wednesday.

Taha Siddiqui, who reports for France 24 is the Pakistan bureau chief of Indian television channel WION. The attempted abduction took place while he was being driven by taxi to the airport serving the capital Islamabad and the neighbouring, larger garrison city of Rawalpindi.

In a tweet posted by Siddiqui, he wrote: "This is Taha Siddiqui (@TahaSSiddiqui) using Cyril's a/c. I was on my way to airport today at 8:20am whn 10-12 armed men stopped my cab & forcibly tried to abduct me. I managed to escape. Safe and with police now. Looking for support in any way possible #StopEnforcedDisappearances."

"I was on my way to airport today at 8:20 am when 10-12 armed men stopped my cab & forcibly tried to abduct me. I managed to escape. Safe and with police now," Siddiqui tweeted from a friend's Twitter account early in the morning.

"Looking for support in any way possible #StopEnforcedDisappearances," he added in the same tweet.

Rights groups have denounced the kidnappings of several social media activists over the past year as attempts to intimidate and silence critics of Pakistan's security establishment.

The country has seen enforced disappearances of journalists in the recent days.

Last year, five Pakistani bloggers went missing for several weeks before four of them were released. All four fled abroad and two afterwards told media that they were tortured by a state intelligence agency during their disappearance.

OneIndia News