A criminal gang and the woman who hired them to thrash her husband have all been arrested in Islamabad.The woman allegedly paid some goons from Peshawar in Rs500,000 to “teach her husband a lesson” because he used to come home late at night.Police say Lubna Qamar Raja suspected that her husband Raja Qamar Iqbal was cheating on her with another woman and wanted to teach him a lesson.She spoke about this with Kosar, a woman who sewed clothes for her. Kosar said her husband Umar Hayat was in Peshawar and could arrange for ‘hired criminals’ to thrash Iqbal.Lubna spoke to Hayat, who arranged for a group of men who to travel to Islamabad, entered Lubna’s house on the night of October 15 last year, and thrashed Iqbal.Lubna said she had paid Rs500,000 to them and had also provided them with a key to the main gate of the house in Sector F-11/3.The plan unraveled because as the goons were leaving the house after beating up Iqbal, members of a family that lived in the upper portion of the house came out and the suspects, fearing the plan might be exposed or they could be reported, shot at a man and critically injured him.The incident was reported to the Shalimar police immediately. At first, everyone though it was a robbery as the goons had also snatched a mobile phone from Iqbal.However, the family living in the upper portion of the house suspected foul play on the part of Lubna and lodged a complaint with Islamabad IGP Tariq Masood Yasin.After the complaint, the police launched reinvestigated the case and obtained Lubna’s mobile phone records, which showed she was in contact with a man named Arab Gul around the time of the incident and also made several calls to him later on.Investigators also found that Kosar was in contact with the same person through her mobile phone. After noting the suspicious connection, the police interrogated Kosar, who spilt the beans.When the police interrogated Lubna, she said she and her husband would often argue and that she also suspected him of being in a relationship with another woman since he used to come home late at night.The police arrested Lubna and arranged a sting operation to arrest the goons.They made Lubna call them to have another person thrashed.This time she paid them Rs50,000 in advance, but the police were waiting for them at the fake victim’s residence. All eight persons including Hayat and Arab Gul – who are proclaimed offenders in murder cases in Peshawar – were arrested by Shalimar police on Thursday.The other suspects were identified as Munawar Khan, Tariq Khan, Saleem Nawaz, Usman Zeb, Hameed Gul, and Munay alias Israel.Published in The Express Tribune, January 14, 2017.