A man suspected of shooting dead a Pakistan Air Force (PAF) officer in Islamabad has been tracked down and arrested within nine hours of the incident, Inspector General (IG) Islamabad Ali Nasir Rizvi has said.

Speaking at a press conference on Sunday, IG Rizvi said that Group Captain Asim Tariq had intervened after spotting an argument between a man and a woman, stepping in when “he was trying to forcefully take the woman away with him.”

The man responded by opening fire, killing the PAF officer on the spot.

Calling the officer a “true patriot and citizen of Pakistan,” the IG said that Captain Tariq had only done what any bystander should have done upon witnessing the incident.

According to the IG, both the woman and the suspect, identified as Saad Abbasi, worked at a cash and carry outlet in G-6. She was a representative for a cosmetics company and he represented a frozen food brand.

He had been dropping her off at the store for the third time that day, and she had assumed the ride would end there, having worked at the outlet for under 10 days.

“She did not know anything. She hadn’t even spent 10 days working there,” the IG said.

Narrating a sequence of events, Rizvi said that Abbasi had instead tried to take the woman, identified as Nimrah, toward a park, prompting her to resist until he stopped the motorcycle at 9th Avenue. An argument followed as she insisted on being taken to her workplace for a stall inspection.

Group Captain Tariq, who was headed toward Rawalpindi on official duty, noticed the man pulling the woman toward his bike. He turned back, parked beside the suspect’s motorcycle, identified himself and warned the man to leave the woman alone. Abbasi initially rode forward but then turned back and stopped next to the officer’s car.

“He fired with the pistol he had, which hit the group captain and resulted in his martyrdom on the spot,” the IG said, adding that the woman had by then moved to the passenger side of the vehicle. The suspect fled immediately after.

The IG described the hunt for the suspect as a major challenge since the woman herself did not know his address. Eleven teams, including digital surveillance and Safe City units, were formed to trace him.

The suspect had changed his shirt, turned off his phone and attempted to escape by bus, the IG recalled, describing him as “shrewd.”

Investigators reviewed 275 Safe City cameras, several private cameras and 137 call detail records before locating him, a process that also revealed he had done the same thing to another woman before, taking her to Mianwali.

“Instead of coming to the police station, their families settled the matter mutually,” the IG said of that earlier case.

Abbasi belongs to Abbottabad. Police carried out 13 raids in Islamabad while sending teams to Lahore, Dera Ismail Khan and other cities. More than 100 officers were involved in the operation that led to his arrest.

IG Rizvi said that Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi personally supervised the operation and made sure that all possible legal actions will follow.