RIVER THAT SWALLOWED RANSOM | True Crime Story of Nazroo Narejo

Some men are not born criminals.

They are broken first.

The kidnapping was supposed to be silent.

A clean grab. A frightened man pulled into darkness. A ransom negotiated through whispers and intermediaries. The Indus had hidden hundreds like this before.

But that night, everything went wrong.

The captive resisted. Someone shouted. A gun went off too early. Villagers poured out with torches and rage, and within minutes, the operation collapsed into gunfire and confusion. By dawn, the hostage was gone, the kidnappers had vanished into the reeds, and another file was opened in a police station that already carried too many names.

At the top of the report was one that never disappeared.

Nazroo Narejo.

That failed kidnapping did not end his reign.

It marked the beginning of its end.

***

BORN INTO MOVING LAND

Nazroo Narejo was born Nazar Ali Narejo in 1966, in upper Sindh, where land does not stay still and neither does justice. The katcha belt along the Indus River is not just geography, it is a sanctuary for fugitives, a maze for police, and a graveyard for certainty.

His father, Rab Rakhio Narejo, was educated (an engineer) and respected. In 1976, he was killed in a violent feud. The murder did not make headlines, but it reshaped a child’s understanding of power.

In the katcha, authority is not inherited from law.

It is taken.

Nazroo grew up learning that survival belonged to those who could enforce it.

***

Nazroo did not enter crime through ideology or rebellion. He entered it through association.

By the late 1980s and early 1990s, police records and media reports place him among armed groups involved in dacoity, highway robberies, and raids on settlements. The terrain favored men who knew the river. Nazroo knew it well.

The first gun was borrowed.

The second was earned.

The third never left his side.

Kidnapping soon became the core of the operation. It was efficient. It paid. Traders, landlords, contractors — anyone with money but limited protection.

But kidnapping is fragile violence.

It only works when fear behaves.

***

Multiple kidnappings attributed to Nazroo’s group did not go as planned. Victims resisted. Rescue attempts were launched. Shots were exchanged. People died.

These were not stories whispered in villages. They appear in FIRs, police statements, and court-linked reporting. Each failure brought heat. Each body sharpened the state’s attention.

By the early 2000s, Nazroo was no longer just another river outlaw.

He was a problem the province wanted erased.

***

TWO HUNDRED CASES, NO CELL

Authorities later stated that around 200 criminal cases were registered against Nazroo Narejo across Sindh.

Murder.

Kidnapping.

Armed robbery.

Attacks on police.

Convictions were rare. Witnesses vanished. Operations failed. Intelligence leaked. The river swallowed mistakes whole.

Nazroo adapted. He moved constantly. He armed family members. He trusted blood more than loyalty.

The state responded with money.

***

TWENTY MILLION Rupees for a Body

The Government of Sindh placed a PKR 20 million bounty on Nazroo’s head — alive or dead.

That figure was not symbolic. It made him one of the most wanted criminals in the province. Newspapers branded him Sindh’s most dreaded dacoit. Police officers spoke his name with exhaustion and hate.

There was no evidence of charity campaigns or public welfare.

No documented Robin Hood myth.

What existed was fear — and control through it.

***

THE LAST NIGHT

On July 11, 2015, intelligence finally closed in near Garhi Yaseen, deep in the katcha.

Police moved in force.

The gunfight was not brief.

It was not clean.

When it ended:

• Nazroo Narejo was dead
• His son, Rab Rakhio Narejo, was dead
• His brother-in-law, Sarwar Narejo, was dead
• Two police officers lay dead
• Several others were wounded

There was no arrest photo.

No courtroom.

Only bodies and statements.

***

Nazroo’s death fractured his network but did not erase it. The river did not change course. New names surfaced. Old methods survived.

What ended was one man’s reign — not the conditions that created it.

Nazroo Narejo was not a misunderstood hero.

He was not a folk legend.

He was a documented product of violence, terrain, and delayed justice.

And it began, like so many true crime stories do, with a kidnapping that went wrong.

***

REFERENCES & SOURCES

Dawn News — Sindh’s most dreaded dacoit carrying Rs20m head money shot dead

The Express Tribune — Police encounter coverage, July 2015

PTI / Business Standard — Criminal background and killing reports

Wikipedia: Nazroo Narejo — Aggregated data sourced from Pakistani media and police records